04/05/2026
It may not yet be in the data, but we see you choosing differently!
It takes time and intention to rise above the marketing machines that make us buy, but we hope by encouraging you to clean closets, we can help bring more awareness to our consumption habits.
We believe in you because we see you acting, differently. ✌️🕊️♻️
Americans are nowhere near done buying cheap stuff, Amanda Mull wrote in 2024. https://theatln.tc/CoUE2VQd
“In all the years I’ve spent covering American consumerism, I’ve heard one type of question from readers far more than any other: This can’t go on forever, right?” Mull writes. “The ever-expanding American closet is already swollen with cheap clothes.” Can we keep buying more?
“As pickled as I am in information and theories about consumption, I’ve never really known how to answer this,” Mull continues. “I can’t blame anyone for being tired—of the advertising and affiliate links … of clothes made of plastic that fall apart after a few washes.” This push for extreme consumption comes from companies like Amazon, Temu, and TikTok.
The numbers show strong demand and impulse purchases—Americans are enthusiastic about high volume and low prices. “And even though these retailers primarily draw in shoppers through super-low prices, they’re very popular with people who already have plenty,” Mull writes. “Wealthier people have more buying power in the first place, but that’s exactly the point: If even they haven’t yet gotten their fix of cheap stuff, we might be nowhere close to the extremes we’re ultimately capable of.”
“Lots of people who say they hate this phenomenon of cheap, high-volume consumption tend to be enthusiastic participants in it.” What would it take for Americans to turn away from these retailers? Possibly “the same concerns over foreign ownership that currently threaten to bring down TikTok,” Mull writes, but that would come from lawmakers and not consumers themselves. “One of the major things that enables American buying habits … is the separation of consumption from production.”
“We just experience the upsides of convenience and abundance,” Mull writes, and that’s the issue. “Eventually, this separation will be more difficult to uphold.” Maybe then “people might begin to feel ashamed, or at least more self-conscious, about buying things they don’t even really want … But if we have to wait for wastefulness to become uncool, then we probably have our answer as to whether this will all slow down anytime soon.”
🎨: Matteo Giuseppe Pani. Source: Getty.
