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"add more unintended shit to buy" What exactly is wrong with that? A good portion of people who shop at a place like Gucci that don't do it for the utility an

"add more unintended shit to buy" What exactly is wrong with that? A good portion of people who shop at a place like Gucci that don't do it for the utility and value for money, so neither of those two standards will apply to them.

yason 9y ago
I think they do but not in the ordinary way. The only way to give people the signal "I have a five-thousand dollar bag" is to go buy a five-thousand dollar bag. The value is not in the bag but in the message of owning (and being able to own) one, addressed to a certain audience that is very sensitive to these signals and that also matters in your life. I'm sure Gucci bags have opened doors that other bags with a fraction of the price haven't so there's utility value, too. It just fits with goals and with social behaviour that isn't very common in regular people, not to mention engineers.
- Godel_unicode 9y ago
  > with goals and with social behaviour that isn't very common in regular people, not to mention engineers. You think using brands to signal status isn't normal? You might consider counting cars with no badges, or going to a coffee shop and counting the literally glowing logos. As for engineers, have you never seen a sticker-bombed laptop? Never had colleagues who wear the conference shirt or carry the conference bag? What about collegiate hoodies? It's not a judgement on you if you truly don't care about brands or status signaling in any arena, but surely you recognize it's the rule not the exception.
  - hueving 9y ago
    None of those are apt comparisons because people don't pay for the brand signaling. Laptop stickers and conference shirts are free or dirt cheap. The logos you see in a coffee shop on electronics are side effects of purchasing the product. I would still buy an MBP without the lighted apple on the back because I'm buying it for it's utility and quality. Nobody would buy a Gucci bag without the logo. Social signaling through brands is not as common as you would like to believe. This can be seen by how many people buy clothes that are close to cost (Gap, Walmart, etc).
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      Walmart has a lot of good basic clothes but a lot of people -- even people who aren't particularly rich -- just wouldn't dream of buying clothes there because it has blue-collar associations. This is really just one element of the rich tapestry of signals a person gives you as to their social class (clothes and language are probably the most distinctive and immediately noticeable signifiers).
      - hueving 9y ago
        Meh, that's not my experience with middle class folks. The only complaints I would hear about Walmart stuff is bad fits, etc. I think you're referring to upper middle class people, which is a much smaller portion of the population.
    - Godel_unicode 9y ago
      I never said anything about money being required for social signaling. If you're signaling that you spend a lot of money, then you need to spend a lot of money. If, however, you're signaling that you're a serious engineer who doesn't care about fashion, you wear and do other things. This also doesn't need to be consciously considered to still be happening. Ask yourself why so many engineers who work in air conditioned offices wear hoodies but never put the hood up. At the core, social signaling is about saying "I belong to this group" and possibly "I'm high-status within this group". For whatever value group takes on for (the rhetorical) you. Edit: There's also the problem of it being the fashion, especially outside the fashion crowd, to talk about how much one doesn't care about fashion or signaling. Which is in itself frequently a kind of signaling.
      - hueving 9y ago
        Sorry, that doesn't fit the narrative because there isn't one brand associated with hoodies. You can pickup a hoodie for close to cost in almost any city. If there were 10,000 different companies that made products indistinguishable from Gucci, then you might have an argument.
crankylinuxuser 9y ago
The "Add more unintended shit to buy" was in parentheses as how the salesperson approaches the whale. The problem I'm trying to show with that, is that they hunt the whales the same way free-to-play Lootboxes work. Gucci is a "lootbox", because you never know how you'll enjoy your purchase! Many of us consider things like lootboxes, extensive psychological manipulation, facebook running 'studies', and many other phenomena that revolve around unwilling subjects. It's horrible to cheat those lower classes with EA's (and others) lootboxes, or free-to-play that equates more money = winning. But when I highlight similar actions being done at "rich people stores", people come up to defend their.. right to use those tools.
- andrewjl 9y ago
  Agree with you there.

yason 9y ago

I think they do but not in the ordinary way. The only way to give people the signal "I have a five-thousand dollar bag" is to go buy a five-thousand dollar bag. The value is not in the bag but in the message of owning (and being able to own) one, addressed to a certain audience that is very sensitive to these signals and that also matters in your life. I'm sure Gucci bags have opened doors that other bags with a fraction of the price haven't so there's utility value, too. It just fits with goals and with social behaviour that isn't very common in regular people, not to mention engineers.

Godel_unicode 9y ago
> with goals and with social behaviour that isn't very common in regular people, not to mention engineers. You think using brands to signal status isn't normal? You might consider counting cars with no badges, or going to a coffee shop and counting the literally glowing logos. As for engineers, have you never seen a sticker-bombed laptop? Never had colleagues who wear the conference shirt or carry the conference bag? What about collegiate hoodies? It's not a judgement on you if you truly don't care about brands or status signaling in any arena, but surely you recognize it's the rule not the exception.
- hueving 9y ago
  None of those are apt comparisons because people don't pay for the brand signaling. Laptop stickers and conference shirts are free or dirt cheap. The logos you see in a coffee shop on electronics are side effects of purchasing the product. I would still buy an MBP without the lighted apple on the back because I'm buying it for it's utility and quality. Nobody would buy a Gucci bag without the logo. Social signaling through brands is not as common as you would like to believe. This can be seen by how many people buy clothes that are close to cost (Gap, Walmart, etc).
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    Walmart has a lot of good basic clothes but a lot of people -- even people who aren't particularly rich -- just wouldn't dream of buying clothes there because it has blue-collar associations. This is really just one element of the rich tapestry of signals a person gives you as to their social class (clothes and language are probably the most distinctive and immediately noticeable signifiers).
    - hueving 9y ago
      Meh, that's not my experience with middle class folks. The only complaints I would hear about Walmart stuff is bad fits, etc. I think you're referring to upper middle class people, which is a much smaller portion of the population.
  - Godel_unicode 9y ago
    I never said anything about money being required for social signaling. If you're signaling that you spend a lot of money, then you need to spend a lot of money. If, however, you're signaling that you're a serious engineer who doesn't care about fashion, you wear and do other things. This also doesn't need to be consciously considered to still be happening. Ask yourself why so many engineers who work in air conditioned offices wear hoodies but never put the hood up. At the core, social signaling is about saying "I belong to this group" and possibly "I'm high-status within this group". For whatever value group takes on for (the rhetorical) you. Edit: There's also the problem of it being the fashion, especially outside the fashion crowd, to talk about how much one doesn't care about fashion or signaling. Which is in itself frequently a kind of signaling.
    - hueving 9y ago
      Sorry, that doesn't fit the narrative because there isn't one brand associated with hoodies. You can pickup a hoodie for close to cost in almost any city. If there were 10,000 different companies that made products indistinguishable from Gucci, then you might have an argument.

crankylinuxuser 9y ago

The "Add more unintended shit to buy" was in parentheses as how the salesperson approaches the whale. The problem I'm trying to show with that, is that they hunt the whales the same way free-to-play Lootboxes work. Gucci is a "lootbox", because you never know how you'll enjoy your purchase! Many of us consider things like lootboxes, extensive psychological manipulation, facebook running 'studies', and many other phenomena that revolve around unwilling subjects. It's horrible to cheat those lower classes with EA's (and others) lootboxes, or free-to-play that equates more money = winning. But when I highlight similar actions being done at "rich people stores", people come up to defend their.. right to use those tools.

andrewjl 9y ago
Agree with you there.