overcoming consumer identities

Remembering my middle and high school years: it was so easy to adopt a new consumer subculture. Ex. emo, hiphop, preppy, country etc. In hindsight, they’re all superficial anyways, lacking deep meaning. We often are expected to let go of our personal culture, like Lenape, Polish, Irish, Italian, Mexican, etc. and adopt a preselected culture within the marketplace.

These preselected cultures even often decide for us:

  • what music we listen to
  • who we accept in our social circle
  • what we do for fun in our free time
  • even our passions.

consumer identities are pre‑fabricated cultures, sold to us as shortcuts to belonging, and they often displace the deeper, older, more rooted cultures we actually come from.

🌱 Consumer Identities Are Not Cultures. They’re Products

  • Culture is inherited, lived, storied, multigenerational, and rooted in land, language, ritual, and memory.
  • Consumer identity is purchased, trend‑driven, algorithmically reinforced, and designed to be replaced every few years.

🎒 The Adolescent Marketplace of Identities

  • Middle and high school is often now a shopping mall of personalities
  • Emo, hip‑hop, preppy, country, skater, scene, goth: all functioning like starter kits
  • Each kit comes with:
    • A dress code
    • A playlist
    • A vocabulary
    • A social circle
    • A worldview
    • A set of acceptable hobbies

This is why its so easy to swap identities because none of them were actually ours. They were modular, purchasable, and externally defined.

🧬 The Hidden Cost: Cultural Amnesia

We often are expected to let go of our personal culture: Lenape, Polish, Irish, Italian, Mexican; and adopt a preselected culture within the marketplace.

  • Immigrant and Indigenous cultures get flattened into consumer categories
  • The marketplace rewards assimilation into brands, not belonging into lineages
  • Young people often learn more about Hot Topic than their ancestorial roots
  • Identity becomes something you buy, not something you grew from and apart of

🧩 Why Consumer Identities Feel So Empty

  • They’re designed for constant churn
  • They rely on external validation
  • They’re algorithmically reinforced
  • They’re market dependent, not community-dependent
  • They don’t require responsibility, reciprocity, or contribution
  • They don’t connect you to land, ancestors, or purpose

Consumer identities are intentionally shallow because depth would make them harder to monetize.

🔥 The Social Control Aspect

Consumer identities subtly dictate:

  • Who you’re allowed to befriend
  • What you’re allowed to enjoy
  • What you’re allowed to dream about
  • What you’re allowed to value
  • What you’re allowed to reject

They create invisible fences around your social world.

This limits imagination, curiosity, and crosscultural connection.

🌿 What It Means to “Overcome” Consumer Identities

A. Personal Culture

  • Family traditions and honoring their unique teachings
  • Ancestral languages
  • Food traditions
  • Rituals
  • Songs
  • Values
  • Land-based memory

B. Self Authored Identity

Not one purchased from the marketplace, but one built from:

  • Your lived experiences
  • Your values
  • Your community
  • Your creativity
  • Your inner compass

C. Mixed, layered, non binary identity

You’re not “emo” or “preppy” — you’re a mosaic.

🛠️ Practical Ways People Can Reclaim Identity

We have far too much creativity before us, to be dressing the same, styling our hair the same, same face paints, same words, etc.

  • Learn your family’s migration or stationary story
  • Reconnect with ancestral foods or languages
  • Explore local history. Hear both sides.
  • Build community outside algorithmic bubbles
  • Create instead of consume
  • Practice slow hobbies: gardening, music, craft, arts, storytelling, writing
  • Spend time in places not designed for consumption

🌄 Identity Beyond the Marketplace

  • Identity that isn’t mass produced
  • Belonging that isn’t algorithmic
  • Expression that isn’t preselected
  • Community that isn’t trend dependent

A person who no longer needs a brand to feel like a person. A community that doesn’t need trends to feel connected. A culture that doesn’t need to be purchased to be lived.

We’re in something far older, deeper, more human, and bursting at the seams with creative fuel.