History Quotes / ConspicuousConsumption

-->-- ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/2117313 Every Betrayed!Harry Fic Ever: The Short Version]]''

->Those were $500 sunglasses.
-->--'''[[Film/MortalKombat Johnny Cage]]''', preparing to kick ass and take spinal columns

-->-- '''JorgeLuisBorges''' prologue of Thorstein Veblen's ''[[RichInDollarsPoorInSense Theory Of The Leisure Class]]'' (The reader can find more about this book at ConspicuousConsumption, RealLife).

-->--'''Bill Maher'''

-->--'''''SomethingAwful''''', [[http://www.somethingawful.com/feature-articles/matt-yglesias-slate/1/ "The Stupidest Articles from Slate's Matt Yglesias in 2013"]]

-->--'''[[SomethingAwful Zack Parsons]]''', [[http://www.somethingawful.com/news/private-space-flight/ "Dare to Take Humanity's Next Great Step and Send Twenty Rich People Into Space"]]

-->--'''[[Paltrow’s Pop-Up Shop Got Robbed Of $173K Worth Of Shit Michel K.]]''', "[[Creator/GwynethPaltrow Paltrow’s]] Pop-Up Shop Got Robbed Of $173K Worth Of Shit"

->Being a successful {{gold digger}} is so much more than just stealing a mountain of cash from a sugar daddy and spending it on platinum dildos and diamond clitty rings.
-->--'''[[http://dlisted.com/2008/10/23/heather-mills-is-a-dumb-gold-digger/ Michael K.]]''', "Heather Mills is a [[AFoolAndHisNewMoneyAreSoonParted Dumb Gold Digger]]"

->I remember once when he got sick, the only time as a performer when I knew he got sick. Altovise ''[his wife]'' called me on the second day and said, 'What are we going to do for money?' And that's when I looked at the five hundred gold watches. He had no financial stability whatsoever.
-->--'''Leslie Bricusse''' on Music/SammyDavisJr

->If they earned £10 million, they'd blow it all by buying Jura or a fleet of K Foundation airships or a Van Gogh to be [[MoneyToBurn ceremonially burned.]]
-->--'''Sarah Champion''' on Music/TheKLF

->''Yeah, [[Music/{{ABBA}} it's funny in a rich man's world]]\\
When I use a piece of string,\\
I use a string of pearls!\\
If something's for sale, consider it sold\\

-->--'''Music/KanyeWest''', "New Slaves"

-->--'''{{Music/Macklemore}}''', "Thrift Shop"

-->--'''[[http://deadspin.com/why-your-team-sucks-2015-atlanta-falcons-1720824337 Drew Magary]]''', "Why Your Team Sucks 2015!: Atlanta Falcons"

-->--'''[[http://deadspin.com/why-your-team-sucks-2015-atlanta-falcons-1720824337 Drew Magary]]'''

->If you can imagine it, rich people have purchased it.
-->--'''[[http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/why-nationwide-loves-its-dead-kid-ad-1683468354 Drew Magary]]'''

(I don't regret much, but I do regret that)\\

->Weather [[TheNewTens the new Great Depression]] with a car from [[TheGreatDepression the last Great Depression.]] When this rolled off the production line in 1937, minorities and women knew their place. It was the world's fastest automobile. Now it's the world's most expensive second-hand automobile. One of only 10 ever made, the Z-Type is a car you can really enjoy sitting in, surrounded by army guards, too terrified to actually drive it anywhere.

[[folder:Newspapers]]

->The characters of ''Film/SexAndTheCity2'' are flyweight bubbleheads living in a world which rarely requires three sentences in a row. Their defining quality is consuming things. They gobble food, fashion, houses, husbands, children, vitamins and freebies. They must plan their wardrobes on the phone, so often do they appear in different basic colors, like the plugs you pound into a Playskool workbench.
-->--'''Creator/RogerEbert'''

[[/folder]]

->FAA regulations prevent you from owning a fully armed fighter jet. However, I'm pretty sure that outside the U.S. there are rich people who own entire FLEETS of fighter jets, tanks, and other assorted weaponry. Shit, the Russian Army is basically [[UsefulNotes/VladimirPutin Putin's]] personal playset...If you can imagine it, rich people have purchased it.

->Some of these people [[EightDeadlyWords make my skin crawl]]. The characters of ''Film/SexAndTheCity2'' are flyweight bubbleheads living in a world which rarely requires three sentences in a row. Their defining quality is consuming things. They gobble food, fashion, houses, husbands, children, vitamins and freebies. They must plan their wardrobes on the phone, so often do they appear in different basic colors, like the plugs you pound into a Playskool workbench.

->Do bear in mind that there isn't any swimming in ''[[Franchise/TheSims Sims 4]]''. So you can no longer lure them into the pool and [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential delete the ladder]], which was so iconic to the series, they might as well have removed the green diamond thing. I wonder if, in their snip-happy way, EA truly realizes how devastating to the core principle removing swimming pools really is. What ''The Sims'' is is a consumerist middle class fantasy about walling yourself off from the real world and reducing all measurement of human development and personal success to one's possessions, your [[DragonHoard dragon's hoard]] of crass suburban decadence. And in that game of Top Trumps, the swimming pool is ''a kingly crown!''

->Consumerists are slaves with white collars. Advertisements have them chasing cars and clothes, working jobs they hate so they can buy shit they don't need. They are the middle children of history. No purpose or place. They have no great war, or great depression. Their great war should be a spiritual war. Their great depression is their lives. Raised by television to believe that one day they'll all be millionaires, movie gods and rock stars. But they won't.
-->--'''''Website/UrbanDictionary'''''

->I scoured Amazon.com and collected 10 of the most luxuriously and insanely overpriced items from their sprawling, madman-populated database. Rich people, drop another panda heart into your helicopter's dog kennel and let's get ready to shop! Poor people, this seems like a good time to warn you that I'm in a helicopter, [[HuntingTheMostDangerousGame hunting you]].

->Together, we might just make it possible for Richard Branson to finally land on Europa and [[MileHighClub finger bang a model]]...In our lifetimes, David and Charles Koch, Warren Buffet, and maybe three to four other extremely rich men and their wives might walk upon the face of a hospitable alien world. They can finally have whatever laws they want. All it takes is the collective willpower to make it happen.\\\
We can witness the dawning of a post-terrestrial age, when anyone with over 50 billion dollars net worth can see an alien clam and eat an alien bird. The Chinese, [[ChinaTakesOverTheWorld new masters of the earth]], are doing their own thing, landing taikonauts on the moon and maybe Mars. But someday we hope that they will realize their full potential and join with the world community to send a few super rich Chinese men into space.

->Seahawks owner Paul Allen bought a refurbished Soviet fighter jet. And apparently, for a cool $7 million, you will soon be able purchase the Saker S-1, a military-style jet designed for personal use. There's definitely a market for this sort of thing among billionaire playboys who have run out of ideas for how to waste money.\\\
FAA regulations prevent you from owning a fully armed fighter jet. (I'm surprised the lobbyists at BIG MISSILE haven't protested this--it just goes to show you that weapons enthusiasts won't make trouble so long as they have insanely lucrative private contracts with the government already in place.) However, I'm pretty sure that outside the U.S. there are rich people who own entire FLEETS of fighter jets, tanks, and other assorted weaponry. Shit, the Russian Army is basically [[UsefulNotes/VladimirPutin Putin's]] personal playset...If you can imagine it, rich people have purchased it.

->Being a successful {{gold digger}} is so much more than just stealing a mountain of cash from a sugar daddy and spending it on platinum dildos and diamond clitty rings...Heather has already burned through $20 million of her $50 million divorce settlement in just seven months. What has she actually been buying? Heather has spent most of her cash on her homes of sin. She reportedly had a $2 million pool put into her England home. She bought a $5 million apartment in NYC and spent around $12 million in renovating her other joints. Heather also paid her staff members around $500,000. Recently, she donated [[PhotoOpWithTheDog $1 million in vegetarian food to a group of kids in the Bronx]]. Yes, because kids really love tofu dogs and bird seed patties.
-->--'''[[http://dlisted.com/2008/10/23/heather-mills-is-a-dumb-gold-digger/ Michael K.]]''', "Heather Mills is a Dumb Gold Digger"

->As happens with all technology, [=HDTVs=] eventually became so affordable that any place with a waiting room bought them up for cheap and slapped them onto walls. Almost none of those waiting room [=HDTVs=] actually have an HD signal running through them. An HDTV without an HD signal is like a pair of glasses without lenses. Yeah, you can probably still see stuff, but who wants to see through a smear of peanut butter over their eyes when there are better options readily available? People would rather use HD screens as decorative accents. They're status symbols. They're the new version of an animal's stuffed head mounted on a wall... If you're going to torture me, do it with panache. Show that you care. Put some effort into making me hate your waiting room by not pissing away technology so you can give the illusion of success.

->The lack of money for the important stuff can be readily seen in areas where it wasn't needed; for instance, [[{{Multiboobage}} triple-breasted]] [[HumanoidFemaleAnimal cat dancer]]. Your movie doesn't turn on the existence on triple-breasted cat dancers, so if you're short on money, spend it where you see the actual deficiency in your overall story, because people will not walk away talking about her, they'll be talking about what your film was supposed to be about. And let's not forget that Star Trek 5 was second only to [[Film/StarTrekTheMotionPicture TMP]] as far as budget went; it had more budget in it than Star Trek [[Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan 2]] and [[Film/StarTrekIIITheSearchForSpock 3]] put together, so there's no real excuse there either.
-->--'''WebVideo/SFDebris''' on ''Film/StarTrekVTheFinalFrontier'''s budget problems

[[folder:Web Video]]

->When {{Music/Lorde}} released 'Royals' and blasted all those pop songs and rap songs about partying and stuff, she didn't do it because it was overdone, or because she doesn't like partying, or because she doesn't get hip hop and she's looking down on people who had to work for their success. No, she doesn't like these songs because ''they're goddamn boring!'' It's like watching a sports movie where, instead of being undergdogs, the heroes ''start out'' the no. 1 team and then they win every game and they become champions.
-->--'''WebVideo/ToddInTheShadows''' on Music/IggyAzalea's "Fancy"

[[/folder]]

->When the rest of us have to put together a costume for Halloween or Purim or whatever weird cosplay shit you do in your free time (no judgement) we go out to our nearest Savers...But not Music/{{Madonna}}. Madonna is a very rich and very powerful lady. When Madonna wanted to dress up as [[Series/GameOfThrones Daenerys Targaryen]] for Purim, she didn’t just send out her assistant to Party Depot and grab a generic 'Dragon Princess' costume-in-a-bag...Emilia Clarke explained that the reason Madonna’s Purim costume was so good was because it was the real thing. Emilia had received an email from an HBO publicist asking if she’d be willing to loan Madonna hone of her dresses from [=GoT=], and since she can read between the lines – that Madonna doesn’t ask, she DEMANDS – she agreed and let her wear it. Good move, Emilia; it’s always better to keep Madge on your good side lest you wake up in an ice-filled bathtub with your kidneys missing and [[LifeDrinker all the youth drained from your face.]]
-->--'''[[http://dlisted.com/2014/03/20/madonna-shopped-for-her-purim-costume-in-hbos-wardrobe-department/ Michael K.]]'''

(What the cock is ''that'' shit?)"''

->Together, we might just make it possible for Richard Branson to finally land on Europa and finger bang a model...In our lifetimes, David and Charles Koch, Warren Buffet, and maybe three to four other extremely rich men and their wives might walk upon the face of a hospitable alien world. They can finally have whatever laws they want. All it takes is the collective willpower to make it happen.\\\

-->'''Handsome Jack''', ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands 2}}''

(I don't regret much, but I do regret that)
If I could start over I'd do it all the same