Some thoughts on Baudrillard

During the brief part of a presentation I hard at Annenberg last night, Sarah Banet-Weiser discussed some of her work with self-branding, especially for young people on social media. She mentioned that self-branding has the scary side effect of people treating themselves and interacting with each other as objects.

When reading Baudrillard, he points out something similar, "men of wealth are no longer surrounded by other human beings, as they have been in the past, but by objects." (32) What Banet-Weiser expressed concern over, Baudrillard hints at; "We are living the period of the objects: that is, we live by their rhythm, according to their incessant cycles." (32) Not only do objects drive people, but self-branding is a way to sell people as one would sell an object. 

Baudrillard also points out that the drugstore has become consumer central, the place to get a fix of the "cafe, cinema, book store, auditorium, trinkets, clothing and many other things." (35) I then had a small moment of horror, because the other night when I was bored, I walked myself right around the block to the nearest Rite Aid just to look around. In a world with a whole arsenal of more meaningful pastimes, it was a drugstore I chose to break up the evening's monotony. Consumerism at work.

Being new to this course of study, it always seemed that the focus on consumers, marketing and selling products is just a necessary evil in the world. I worked in retail and merchandising for years. As a manger-in-training, I was taught quick sell items should go right by the cash registers, items on display will faster, more popular items should be placed towards the back of the store so customers have to walk through a maze of other products to get what they want, items placed at eye level sell better and organized merchandise is easier to shop.

In other words, companies invest a lot of time organizing their wares to get maximum profit out of each customer. Or, as Baudrillard says about this focus on product organization, "The arrangement directs the purchasing impulse towards networks of objects in order to seduce it and elicit, in accordance with its own logic, a maximal investment, reaching the limits of economical path." (34)

To sum up, what Banet-Weiser points to, and my own Rite Aid and retail self-evaluation, Baudrillard's thought, "we have reached the point where "consumption" has grasped the whole of life," is thought provoking. (36)