Prática de Shadowing: consumerism makes us boring and it shows - Aprenda a falar inglês com vídeo

The longer I live and the more I learn, the more I am convinced that consumerism has taken and continues to take all that is good from us.

Because I personally believe that consumerism has made us bored, it makes us more lonely, and all just to make a few rich dudes at the

top richer at the cost of filling our landfills with stuff that we definitely didn't need, and most of the time do not even want.

So today I wanted to talk about how I believe consumerism as a society.

Studies show that 8 in 10 Gen Zers say they felt lonely in the past year, and 1 in 3 adults report chronic loneliness, and 2 thirds of people at ages 18 to 34 say

stress makes it hard for them to even focus day to day.

To me, this makes it very obvious that our culture is not working with our human physiology, with what our brains and our bodies were meant to do.

And the through line of all these things to me about our culture is that we worship consumerism make us less lonely,

will make us more happy, will make us cooler.

And at the end of the day, it does the complete opposite.

I spend most of my time talking about how consumerism is

linked to nearly every single environmental problem you have ever heard about.

You name it, and it's likely connected to consumerism for unnecessary products, okay?

There's a level of consumerism that is needed or makes our lives easier and better.

It's the unnecessary, never -ending hamster wheel of thinking that consume a lot more like in the U .S.

Aside from this hamster wheel just constantly feeding into our landfills, in order to create all of those products, things have to be extracted from our planet.

And we live on a finite planet with finite resources.

So continuing to extract those resources not only harms our ability to provide for future generations,

but it also means that whoever lives in those communities where those resources are being extracted are being exploited. and landfill anyway.

And those things are what contribute to all the environmental problems like deforestation, climate change, air pollution, water pollution, the list goes on.

The average American household has 300 ,000 items in it.

And yet we are as lonely as we've ever been.

We are as bored as we've ever been.

And mental health diagnoses are on the rise.

And we've been sold this idea that if we just buy the right thing, it will fix all of our problems.

And there's so much people telling you that if you just buy this one more thing that they swear is life -changing,

your life can be just as good too.

And do you notice that that same thing keeps happening day after day after day?

And there's plenty of that on the internet.

So I hope that my channel can serve as the place that tells you the opposite of that.

The place that tells you that's not going to happen.

You can come here once a week, every Wednesday.

If you didn't already know that, maybe hit the subscribe button, turn notifications on, but you can come here every Wednesday to

It's going to be something that you can buy once and that's that.

And most of the time, I'll be telling you that you don't need anything at all.

In the face of our current economy, it is more important to me now than ever else in my adult life to budget

and save as much money as possible, which is why I'm so excited that the sponsor of today's video can help us do that.

Rocket Money is the easy to use personal finance app that can help you manage subscriptions, lower bills and track your spending all in one place.

of my budget and saving money.

It brought up so many subscriptions that I didn't even know I had

because I have so many different ones for my job.

And it was unbelievable how many times you don't even know, but you've signed up for a subscription and sometimes it only comes out once a year, sneaky little guys.

But I was able to cancel them with just a couple taps without having to look up all my passwords

and all those sort of things.

They make it much easier than hunting down who even is charging the subscription and then emailing customer service.

Rocket Money has helped its you use all of the app's premium features, and they've also helped customers save over $500 million in canceled subscriptions.

Since the beginning of the year, I have been doing weekly budget meetings with my partner, and Rocket Money's app actually has great budgeting tools that you can test out as well.

It can give me reminders before my bills hit and or when my bank account is getting low.

So if you are also into saving money or being more budget conscious, I highly recommend checking Rocket Money out.

You can go to rocketmoney .com slash shall be armed to try it for free and unlock

experience with this of feeling like consumerism is the answer to all of my problems

and I've gone through phases in my life where I have to reckon with

that I think it's a combination of our culture

and also my personality or my brain the way it seeks dopamine is like

so susceptible to consumerism

and I grew up in a house where consumerism was our

pastime was the hobby like on a Friday evening what am

I doing I'm going to the mall on the weekend what

am I doing we're going to Kohl's I am the daughter of a Kohl's mom if you know what that means

you know.

Jenna, we're going into the coals.

But I've always been a creative person

and I think back to my formative years and that's so obvious to me because I was in love with taking photos.

When Vine came out, oh my god, it was everything to me.

In high school, I was student council president

and I was also the person who always had the eye for creativity when we were doing something.

I also was the social president of my drill team, which is like literally just meant to be creative and keep people engaged.

Looking at it now, the creativity, the photos, the videos, and environmentalism is literally how I ended up with this being my job.

But I look back at all those times and I realized that even though I had this drive to be creative, I was funneling that into always buying new clothes.

And that's what I was modeled in my home.

And I think that's what we're modeled a lot in our society.

So think about today, what you're like, maybe five closest people to what are their hobbies, like really think do people around you have them.

And I think that or like maybe they have one thing that they do sometimes.

But if you think about how often those people around you are buying things from like Amazon

or TikTok shop or anytime an event comes up, they are ready to go and buy something new.

I feel like that is really common and maybe it's not for you, but obviously statistics say that that is how the average American lives.

The average American buys 72 new clothing pieces a year.

And when you just stop and think about that

and you think about how much time it must consume to find those pieces and to buy those pieces, and to then style them and organize your closet,

the time it takes just to manage buying that many new things every single year is a hobby, is a pastime in and of itself.

And I think that post -World War II, when fast fashion was really ramping up and consumerism was seen as the pinnacle of patriotism,

if we really think about how after 9 -11, the thing that our president united the country in telling us to do was to go shopping.

This work begins with keeping our economy growing.

And I encourage you all to go shopping more.

That will forever be burned into my brain is one of the things that makes me think that as a culture, we truly worship consumerism as our pinnacle.

And if you really start to think about who we think is successful in the world

and what is aspirational in our culture, it's all connected to having money, success.

and what you can buy the reason i say all

that is because i do think that in the last 50 years

or so the united states has truly given up any form of creativity of self -expression

and it's all funneled into consumerism now

so for example think about what community spaces or third spaces

or what type of events someone would have been doing

when they were younger if they were like our parents age

or even our grandparents age crafting and making your own stuff was so normal was so something

like only one person i know is able to sew

or mend or fix their own clothes

or one person over here is really into quilting that was normal

and i personally think that now that's why we call these things granny hobbies is

100

because our grandmas it was so normal for their generation

101

and throughout time from there those hobbies began to die out

102

and be traded in for consumerism crafting and diy was something

103

that you would do with your community for your neighbors or for your family or for your a community focused activity.

104

And we call things like gardening grandma hobbies because it was a normal part of life back then.

105

And nowadays gardening is something that people are doing, but I feel it's become another form of consumerism where there's just so many different things that you can buy for it.

106

And gardening is a great example of this trap that I feel like exists when people try to get into hobbies, is that the hobby becomes more about what you need to buy to do the hobby than the actual hobby itself.

107

And by the time you get through all of the research and

108

the things that you need for

109

that thing a lot of times those materials just sit in someone's corner in their house

110

and or i think probably parts of this is also

111

because people used to learn from people

112

that they knew friends family neighbors like i said that's how

113

you would get into these different things especially things like gardening

114

right it can be really hard to learn how to do

115

that thing without having someone there to teach you and we're

116

so disconnected from our neighbors

117

that a lot of people don't have the ability to learn

118

from their neighbor i personally first like stuff i learned how to sew was

119

because of my neighbor and i'm so grateful for her

120

and grateful for the community that i have built here

121

but not everybody has that anymore because our culture has changed

122

so much to romanticize being able to do things by yourself

123

and to romanticize canceling plans and not knowing your neighbors and

124

and those sort of things and especially in a post -2020 world

125

if you think about what fitness even used to look like because my hobbies are the

126

hobbies are very much fitness activity focused.

127

And you have to think about pre 2020, like fitness activities were like you would go play sports with people in real life,

128

you would go to the gym where you might see the same person over

129

and over and you might make a friend fitness classes, etc. And in 2020, understandably, a lot of things started to shift to at home machines.

130

I mean, that shift was already happening, I think a lot because of the disconnect between community versus individualism,

131

But I think post 2020, the walking pads and the at -home machines have become

132

so much more normalized to where fitness is now something

133

that you're not engaging anybody in and everybody has to buy their own.

134

When like the whole point of a gym is

135

that you can share with your community because you don't use a treadmill all day and not everybody needs to own one.

136

But of course, convincing people

137

that doing it at home is like a better thing to do keeps us individualistic and also keeps us consuming.

138

community -minded society that is interested and has time and ability and energy to do things with their time other than shopping.

139

But marketing and manipulation of our minds over time

140

and the culture shift makes it to where you can do it by yourself.

141

And online shopping specifically makes it to where you can do it from your home.

142

To me, it's very obvious that consumerism has made us lonely and also boring because I think that having the hobbies, not just the ones we've talked about,

143

They give you something to talk about and show off

144

that you are constantly improving on that you are constantly working towards and expressing yourself through those hobbies.

145

And when we no longer have that, and instead we just have consumerism, then we kind of are really becoming, I don't want to say drones, but like very similar, right?

146

Because when consumerism is how we're all expressing ourselves, when consumerism is the thing that we're doing and trends and marketing are at the forefront of that,

147

then we all kind of are just buying the same polyester plaster plastic clothing.

148

The trends are coming and going faster than we even know what to do with, and people are buying them because they're cool, not to express themselves.

149

Home decor has different trends, and fashion obviously has different trends, and TikTok shop will follow you to the depths of the earth to try to convince you

150

that you need to buy that thing that you happen to click on.

151

Don't get me started on that.

152

I say all that to say

153

if we're all seeing the same stuff on social media

154

and then we're all buying the same stuff that we've seen on social media,

155

we're really we're not really expressing ourselves and we're not really working towards something or being creative or anything.

156

We are literally just in this hamster wheel of buying the next thing so that we look cool to the in crowd.

157

Everyone's wearing the same sweater, but no one's talking about anything that matters to them.

158

You know what I mean?

159

Can we talk about like the political and economic state of the world right now?

160

I think we can see this a lot with aesthetics

161

that are connected to a niche or a subculture or whatever it is.

162

So specifically, if we're talking about, don't know you want to be someone who dresses in the aesthetic of a granola girly right

163

when i say that word a certain type of person on pinterest comes to mind

164

but i think maybe because we are so lonely and individualistic

165

and not existing in the world within those communities within whatever a granola community looks like then the way

166

that you think that you become a granola person is by looking like them

167

because your experience with what it means to be a granola girly is what it

168

But typically you would become a part of that community and the aesthetic would come second.

169

The aesthetic comes from existing in nature and wanting to emulate those textures

170

or those colors or it is what you're seeing other people in the actual community in real life wearing.

171

And then you assimilate to that type of niche, that type of culture, and you are expressing your fashion, your aesthetics, whatever with that a part of a group that you are a part of.

172

But I think that there's a big part of this whole shifting from actual community

173

and hobbies and interests to consumerism

174

that makes it to where people just want to look like they're part of

175

that or they don't understand that that aesthetic is connected to a lifestyle

176

and instead they're just trying to emulate it through consumerism.

177

And I think this is further backed up by the fact that studies say that spending on hobby materials,

178

ever is like on the steep decline and that tells me

179

that people really do want to have interesting things to do with their time

180

and hobbies so they're buying the things

181

because consumerism has convinced us that's how you become

182

that person is by buying the stuff

183

and to be clear i am not trying to blame you

184

or me or honestly any individual person i think

185

that this problem comes from our cultural shift that is manipulated and controlled by billionaires and marketing um

186

we go further into the economic system that we live under, people are working a lot less.

187

Like the output that we are expected from our jobs is continually increasing while wages stagnate.

188

And so people are overworked and underpaid and overstimulated.

189

And just at the end of the day, a lot of times just want to lay down and be done and zonk out on like social media,

190

scrolling and online shopping is a really easy way to get a dopamine hit.

191

I've talked about this so many with this, it's the easiest low effort way.

192

You can do it from laying on your couch at the

193

end of a day to make yourself feel better for working so hard.

194

I think that you can't have this conversation really about loss of third spaces

195

and loss of community and individualism and hyper consumerism without acknowledging that like where we're at in society,

196

it's really hard to kind of go against the mainstream narrative or the mainstream entertainment modes,

197

which is consumerism, someone hopefully, somewhere along the way, introduces you to the idea

198

that you will be much happier and much more fulfilled

199

if you can manage to shift away from consumerism being your whole personality,

200

your whole aesthetic, your whole part of you that is interesting. by will.

201

I have like an endless amount of thoughts on this topic

202

and it's really hard sometimes for me to organize these thoughts nice and neatly because over time it's just become...

203

We're pausing for the bird clock. Which bird is that?

204

I don't know all of them yet.

205

Is it the Mockingbird?

206

I think it is.

207

I was going to guess that, but I didn't want to be wrong.

208

They make so many different sounds.

209

Anyway, it is kind of hard for me to make this huge topic that I feel is so important small.

210

But I hope that the overall point is getting through to you.

211

That I really feel that if we don't actively make the decision to not make consumerism our entire personality, we will be bored.

212

We will be lonely.

213

make us less bored and make us more interesting and make our lives feel more fulfilling.

214

We have to move away from consumerism being the thing that keeps us going.

215

And the thing for me right now, and it changes, but right now it's sewing.

216

And I have a whole series where I talk about ways that I am upcycling and sewing, and I'm kind of learning as we go together, you and I.

217

So if that's something you'd be interested in, I'll leave a video right here for you to check that out.

218

There is a way out of consumerism being your whole personality, and I will help you find it.

219

subscribe button and remember until next time you cannot do all the good

220

that the world needs but the world needs all the good that you can do Bye, guys.

✨ Vídeo recomendado

186 frases

Food in my life! Eating habits in different countries. You are what you eat - agree?

University StudentsBusiness English+2

98 frases

6 Things I Wish I Stopped Buying Years Ago | Frugal Living

University StudentsBusiness English+2

24 frases

The Economics of Happiness - Trailer

University StudentsBusiness English+2

517 frases

Consume more than you Create: Žižek, Lord of the Flies, Balenciaga, the Pygmalion delusion, ADHD

University StudentsBusiness English+2

136 frases

Are you making yourself miserable?

University StudentsBusiness English+2

164 frases

IELTS Speaking Part 3 – Boredom, Places, and Technology

IELTS PrepUniversity Students+2

O que é a Técnica de Shadowing?

Shadowing é uma técnica de aprendizado de idiomas com base científica, originalmente desenvolvida para o treinamento de intérpretes profissionais. O método é simples, mas poderoso: você ouve áudio em inglês nativo e repete imediatamente em voz alta — como uma sombra seguindo o falante com 1-2 segundos de atraso. Pesquisas mostram melhora significativa na precisão da pronúncia, entonação, ritmo, sons conectados, compreensão auditiva e fluência na fala.

Técnica de shadowing: leia o guia completo passo a passo →

Prática de Shadowing: consumerism makes us boring and it shows - Aprenda a falar inglês com vídeo

How America Got So Good At Buying Sh*t

To the guy who wants to know why he's lonely and sad

Is smart technology making us dumb? | GMF compact

How to Save Our Planet

The grindification of hobbies

Leaving America Changed the Way I See Everything

Food in my life! Eating habits in different countries. You are what you eat - agree?

6 Things I Wish I Stopped Buying Years Ago | Frugal Living

The Economics of Happiness - Trailer

Consume more than you Create: Žižek, Lord of the Flies, Balenciaga, the Pygmalion delusion, ADHD

Are you making yourself miserable?

IELTS Speaking Part 3 – Boredom, Places, and Technology

Por que praticar a fala com este vídeo?

Gramática & Expressões em Contexto

Armadilhas Comuns de Pronúncia

O que é a Técnica de Shadowing?