It’s easy to get lost in a shopping mall. It’s overwhelming, the options, the store to store deals, the things you want and the things you don’t. You lose the money in your wallet—it slips between fingers, shifts into shirts and jewelry, a nice watch or a game for a little brother. You leave the mall a little guilty but also a little happy.
Now that the world—and, evidently, shopping malls—are at our fingertips, it’s getting harder and harder to resist a culture of consumerism. From eBay to TikTok shops, we’re constantly browsing. Every ad we scroll past is a decision, and every purchase we make is against our will. Overconsumption has reared its head.
Now, this word “overconsumption” has plagued YouTube think-pieces for the past few years, so it has lost a bit of weight. Basically, it is the line that cannot be crossed, the moment materialism makes us bleed. Fast fashion is the most notable example; the fashion industry is a major contributor to rising CO2 emissions and poor working conditions for employees. Somehow, quantity has trumped quality, and it is not just in the clothes we buy. I see it in Stanley Cup hauls on TikTok—there’s an entire market of accessories for these water bottles. It’s hard not to laugh at the matching minibags or the clip for lip balm or the tiny version of the same water bottle for mints. The tiny versions alone cost roughly $10 depending on the seller, while the tumblers themselves average around $40. It’s absurd. It’s ridiculous. Right?
It’s easy to label something like this as “overconsumption.” It’s easy to point and laugh at someone who is clearly rich and bored. But, then I look over at my bookshelf filled with figures and manga that I barely touch, much less read, and I stop laughing.
I deflect. I’m a collector; I collect things I enjoy for my personal pleasure. It’s practically human nature to collect, to hoard, to find comfort in materialism. Museums are a manifestation of this piece of humanity, have existed for thousands of years, proof that collection is an integral part of our history. But where is the line between collecting and overconsumption? How is my mountain of manga any different than a wall of Stanley Cups?
For me, the answer lies in intent and purpose, not just in ourselves but the things we collect. Historical artifacts are not something you can just throw away. They are meant to be kept, to be seen, to prove that we were really there. We preserve pieces of ourselves behind plexiglass, finding new meaning in the past. But that’s an easy one, a bridge between both cases. What about baseball cards? Well, that is easy, too: they are intended for collection, intended for safe-keeping. They exist simply for us, for those who care enough to treasure them.
Books are a little bit harder, but also a little bit easy, for they are written by an author and binded for an audience. Their purpose is storytelling; they are expecting a reader, someone to read them. But then, when millions and millions of people do read, and millions and millions of people still read, there exists a certain tax on time. The older the wiser, as they say, and any book that has stuck around this long is worth a pretty penny. People like a spine from 1865 next to a spine from 1864, people like a shelf dedicated to Austens and Woolfs and Hemingways, and people like mountains of manga tucked in bookcase corners. Books are something to be read, but they’re also something to be loved.
Now, it is time for a challenge: the water bottle-shaped elephant in the room. It is impossible to leave my apartment without seeing a Stanley Cup. Hell, I even have one—it was a gift from my boss, sure, but it is still mine. It quite literally exploded into modern day pop culture, but I never really understood why. Why are people camping outside Targets for different shades of the same cup? Why buy five or ten or twenty of something that is meant to be reusable, that is intended to save energy? This is not an isolated incident; water bottles have been subjects of microtrends since the dawn of tumbler time. From Yetis to Hydroflasks to Stanley Cups and now, suddenly, Owala Sips, water bottles have almost become a kind of accessory. For your first day of school, you want the cool hair, the cool shoes, the cool clothes and, now, the cool water bottle. It is crazy how people treat water bottle drops at a Target like Black Friday before Covid, how they are dressed up in TikToks with minibags and clip on containers, a walking advertisement for Amazon Prime. A good water bottle is an investment, but twenty seems like a waste of money, a waste of space and a waste of energy.
But everyone has their niche—the small nooks and crannies of an interest they cannot stop hiding in. What does it matter what people buy, what people hoard, if it matters for them? What right do I have to judge someone who is just having fun?
To put it simply: because I can. We could argue all day about what is right or wrong, what is intended and what is purposeful. But in the end, I still think collecting water bottles defeats the purpose, that collecting something like that is wasteful. But you could say the same about me and my books, about me and my figures. To me, water bottles are intended to be reusable alternatives to plastic water bottles. They help conserve energy and reduce waste, and to buy an unnecessary amount defeats the purpose. To me, figures and manga and books, they are all art! In a way, they are meant to be displayed. But not everyone thinks that way, and that is okay. We are all hypocrites; it is only human.
Everyone collects something, whether it be clothes or cups, manga or memories. It is important to remember that there’s always a line that can be crossed, that hobbies can always tiptoe into harmful habits. Collections can easily lead to overconsumption. So, watch those wallets, do not trip on trinkets. There is such a thing as “too much.”
