Consoomers / Consoomer Culture - Because if it has a recogniseable brand on it, I’d buy it!

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XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG said:
My point is that scarcity is not the opposite of abundance. Sand in a desert is abundant and scarce. The opposite of abundance is shortage.
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I don't think how you use scarce is how other people uses scarce.
 
Cuntspiracy Man said:
>compared to the demand
this is pretty important and probably fit in with what other guy is saying, something may be common but the demand for it is larger than the supply
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Not arguing with that, but it would still mean the example of sand in the desert isn't accurate since there's no real demand for sand. If we're just talking about there being a limited amount even if it outstrips demand then a more appropriate word would be "finite".
 
XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG said:
Scalping can only occur
1. For a physical good (there's no such thing of a shortage of digital goods)
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It can technically occur for virtual game cosmetics or skins, as many get released only during specific seasons or become available only at very low quantities, creating an artificial shortage, which makes the items substantially more valuable than their intrinsic value. Although, I can only see this happening in games with sufficiently complex player economies like MMOs. If somebody had partaken in scalping of virtual goods, it would be Eve Online or some shit, the type of things people do in that game is mind boggling.

XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG said:
It's a fairly common tactic to intentionally have a way too low list price for something to drum up demand and advertisement. What better advertisement can you have for a show or an event if people are standing hundreds of meters in line to get a ticket, for instance?
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Wait... you're saying that all those instances of people standing in massive lines to get the latest iphone or some blokes buying up entire shelves of Magic the Gathering cards... it all is instigated on purpose by setting really low prices in conjunction of having limited availability, even if they're fully capable of doing so otherwise? Then that would mean that substantial part of the oddities recorded within the thread are a by-product of corporate psychological manipulation. Are most consoomers actually victims of psyops?
 
Skylavijas said:
It can technically occur for virtual game cosmetics or skins, as many get released only during specific seasons or become available only at very low quantities, creating an artificial shortage, which makes the items substantially more valuable than their intrinsic value. Although, I can only see this happening in games with sufficiently complex player economies like MMOs. If somebody had partaken in scalping of virtual goods, it would be Eve Online or some shit, the type of things people do in that game is mind boggling.
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No, no, first of all there is no such thing as "intrinsic value". Virtual game cosmetics are not even metaphysically existent beyond some texture and mesh definitions, database entries for player inventory tracking, and inventory parametrization, all of which only metaphysically exist on server and computer disks.
And secondly, most virtual games don't even have markets, because they don't have any trading of items between players. Any and all prices are completely made up by the storefront operator.
Skylavijas said:
Wait... you're saying that all those instances of people standing in massive lines to get the latest iphone or some blokes buying up entire shelves of Magic the Gathering cards... it all is instigated on purpose by setting really low prices in conjunction of having limited availability, even if they're fully capable of doing so otherwise? Then that would mean that substantial part of the oddities recorded within the thread are a by-product of corporate psychological manipulation. Are most consoomers actually victims of psyops?
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Yes.
Always have been.
The consoomer is a purely psychological phenomenon.
 
XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG said:
most virtual games don't even have markets, because they don't have any trading of items between players. Any and all prices are completely made up by the storefront operator.
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Which is why I used Eve Online as an example, an MMO with a market where players are able to set prices on resources, spaceships, among other things. It is a simulated market, but a market nonetheless, making things like scalping hypothetically feasible.
XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG said:
Yes.
Always have been.
The consoomer is a purely psychological phenomenon.
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You got any books, articles or documentaries for recommendation that go further into this?
 
Skylavijas said:
Which is why I used Eve Online as an example, an MMO with a market where players are able to set prices on resources, spaceships, among other things. It is a simulated market, but a market nonetheless, making things like scalping hypothetically feasible.
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True, EVE Online is a game in which players have the ability to trade items among each other. And some items, like seasonal items, are typically only available in limited supply. ... I was writing a long point here, but got lost in thought because I don't know the EVE Online market, so I tried to write an example based on real life goods
Skylavijas said:
You got any books, articles or documentaries for recommendation that go further into this?
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Afraid not, my forte is more in economics and philosophy rather than psychology and contemporary cultural analysis
 
Skylavijas said:
Wait... you're saying that all those instances of people standing in massive lines to get the latest iphone or some blokes buying up entire shelves of Magic the Gathering cards... it all is instigated on purpose by setting really low prices in conjunction of having limited availability, even if they're fully capable of doing so otherwise? Then that would mean that substantial part of the oddities recorded within the thread are a by-product of corporate psychological manipulation. Are most consoomers actually victims of psyops?
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I'm not an economist but I've seen this phenomenon firsthand playing Magic and the answer is yes. There's a whole slew of scummy business practices and psychological tricks WotC uses to maintain the scarcity of certain necessary cards (I can elaborate more on this if you like but it's not immediately relevant) for two reasons. One: speculators buying boxes in bulk are one of their most lucrative demographics (the average consumer will never outspend a guy willing to buy an entire pallet of $150 boxes in hopes that he can resell them later). Two: it creates a sense of FOMO and encourages people with addictive personalities to spend more and spend often.

You would expect a sensible person to pride themselves on their canny purchasing, but MtG players are rarely sensible. An expensive, powerful deck is seen as a status symbol even if "spent a lot of money" shouldn't be a criteria to take pride in. The community and content bubble surrounding the game only exacerbates the issue. Even if no one directly encourages you to spend more (although I have unironically seen this happen), every time you find yourself losing a game to someone with The New Thing(TM) Wizards is banking on you wanting to spend. I've played the game my entire life and will admit I enjoy cracking packs now and then, even buying a box if I'm flush with cash, but that's because I enjoy low-risk gambling and am aware that it's wasteful so I usually don't do it in excess. I've known guys who are less canny, let's say, that have spent as much on the game in a few years as I have in 20+, even with my explicit warning that they should try to play on a shoestring budget and only spend strategically.
 
As an aside. The same thing happens with Blacksmiths Anvils. Theres usually one guy within 5hrs drive (then theres another guys anvil territory) that buys up all the anvils. Literal barn full of anvils, selling 1 or 2 a year. You wait for this bastard to die, but the other anvil guys drive 6hrs and buy out the whole barn before the body is cold, under cover of darkness.
 
Skylavijas said:
If somebody had partaken in scalping of virtual goods, it would be Eve Online or some shit, the type of things people do in that game is mind boggling.
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TF2 and CS:GO both have active scalper markets.

@Critical Raxx Theory True blacksmithing chads take an acetylene torch and steal a bit railroad track. It's Perfectly safe, trains can run over a missing track section without derailment.
 
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Skylavijas said:
Sure, go ahead, perfect thread to do so
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Fair enough. I'm going to assume anyone reading this doesn't play the game so I hope this post doesn't come across as condescending. Magic the Gathering is a fantasy game where you have five colors of magic that use mana of a corresponding color, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. To supplement this, you can play more than one color and it's often advantageous to do so. Different lands, your resource cards, generate mana of different colors. This leads to one of the biggest and shittiest of WotC's tricks.

Lands are one of the biggest bottlenecks to playing the game because some lands generate mana of multiple colors, some generate mana faster than others, some come with other gameplay utilities. Bad land cards are worth pennies and you can even make a decent deck using them, but good land cards that should be the game's baseline can command $10, $20, even $40+ prices on the secondary market because they're rarely reprinted and always kept at rare. See the point about FOMO above.

There are even more subtle tricks WotC uses with lands such as how they're named (no, I'm not fucking kidding). Magic's story takes place across different worlds and major locations on those worlds are represented through land cards. So take something like the "triomes" from the setting of New Capenna, which each command a $10-$15 pricetag on the secondary market. Each is named for a character from New Capenna that inhabits them. You'll never see a "Raffine's Tower" from a set that doesn't take place in New Capenna because Raffine lives there in her tower. This means that anytime WotC announces that we're getting a new set from Capenna, people are already interested before they have any other information because they can safely bet those necessary cards will see a reprint. Maybe even with a fancy foil alt-art treatment if you buy the Collector's Edition packs! Spend more!

This is just one example of many but is one of the most blatant. Wizards of the Coast isn't legally allowed to acknowledge that a secondary market exists for their cards, but they know that it's crucial they contribute to its maintenance because the ecosystem of 2nd party tournaments, YouTube content creators, and the aforementioned speculators help prop their game up. If they make it too easy to get the good cards, the FOMO dries up and those institutions wither, and WotC withers in turn because they lose the guaranteed spending and the cloud of artificial hype that surrounds the game at all times.
 
This is fascinating. I've heard of "whales" as a concept to describe the people mobile games and loot box shooters exploit, by making them dump MASSIVE funds into their games, but I never heard of such phenomenon occurring in real life.

You are right @Very Professional, these sort of practices have been labelled as scummy in video games for years, sometimes warranting games to get banned in entire countries because of it.
 
Skylavijas said:
This is fascinating. I've heard of "whales" as a concept to describe the people mobile games and loot box shooters exploit, by making them dump MASSIVE funds into their games, but I never heard of such phenomenon occurring in real life.

You are right @Very Professional, these sort of practices have been labelled as scummy in video games for years, sometimes warranting games to get banned in entire countries because of it.
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Magic being a TCG has always had some degree of this, as any TCG does, but it never used to be this bad. WotC has only gotten more Jewish with their business practices, particularly in the past 5 years (reaching a fever pitch this past year), and they've been making money hand-over-fist for it. There's really no way to avoid it now, it actively affects the health and artistry of what used to be a respectable game. I don't know what change came over people, but at some point "sellout" went from a dirty word to a point of pride. Maybe the companies really have just mastered propaganda. Maybe social media just made everyone dumber. All I know is I fucking hate redditors.
 
When I used to play card games with friends back in highschool, we would just print the cards into a sheet, then cut with scissors and glue them into a piece of cardboard or thick paper, it always works and you spend only the price of the ink unless you go to a store to print them and cardboard/thick paper can be found around a house almost all the time. That's something people do here when they really want to play a card game but have no official means to get the cards due to country/stock shortage/etc. I mean the images are online most of the time, if not just draw them yourself (I had one classmate who did this exactly, it was funny because he couldn't really draw well)
 
Negev said:
Does black people spending thousands of dollars on prom count as consooming? I didn't realize this until it was talked about a bit recently but its crazy how all out they go for a stupid school dance that most people barely remember. I know they are stupid but I just don't understand why they latch onto prom so bad, I guess its because they know its the last big event that most of them will ever go to that isn't some ghetto gang party.
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I'm guessing they don't ban kids from dances for truancy or shit grades at this school...
 
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