Essay Hypothesis (OUGD401)

I had to create a hypothesis for to briefly answer the essay question the things I needed to consider where; context, historical, visual, aesthetic, technical, style, technology, language, communication, concepts, ideology, politics, identity, values and ethics.

Branding has a direct relationship with us as the consumer self and completely orchestrates the way we act in daily life. The way things are branded and advertised creates a general presumption of quality and level of class related to each product creating the false promise of status and acceptance when buying certain things. Visual pollution infiltrates our minds creating a society of people desperately overconsuming the un-necessary to impress each other. We have no consideration about environmental issues and even our own mental health that is affected by living this way. Rebranding of similar products creates a hierarchy of class status related to things, we then buy them to increase our feeling of value and belonging among each other. We are given a choice of products which gives us a false sense of freedom but manipulates us to have aspirations to be able to buy what's considered the most attractive and best quality choice. The subliminal messages in advertising creates a desire for us to be better than everyone else, we become in constant competition with each other. Judging each other by the things we own rather than each others personalities leading to a society of unhappy, insecure people with separation anxiety (that are also in crippling debt).

Consumerism mindmap (OUGD401)

I created a mindmap of all the things related to consumerism I could think of. When it comes to writing my essay hopefully I can try include everything or at least the most important things on it.