Live like the stars at the low interest rate of 20%

Once again December has descended upon us with the echos of competing songs flooding in from every direction and every shop we pass by assault us in a barrage of sound. Our other senses bombarded with greens and reds, the swirl of mint, and the promise of joy if we just engage in the ritual of spending. I don't hate Christmas, I enjoy the days off work, and I enjoy the time I get to spend with my family, but I do not enjoy the feverish pace of consumption in the guise companionship, the struggle to find the perfect trinket to express a feeling caring or thoughtfulness. A few kind words, a hug and sometime spend in conversation have no equal in the material realm.
 Consumption I would argue is media driven, we see ads telling us what we need to make our lives easier or to be fashionable, as a few examples. One of the ways that ad media, either print, video, or audio, gets use to consume their products at a unreal pace is through the use of "celebrity" spokes people, hiring someone rich and/or famous to tell you how great the product is and how much they love the product and that you should do likewise. We see this kind of partnership a lot in the "beauty" industry, "celebrities" selling face time and endorsement, brands like covergirl are notorious for this, here, you can see a list of relatively famous people who have made deals with covergirl, I will note a company that does Animal testing and sadly faced by a self reported vegan, that being Ellen Degeneres. Celebrities also create consumption patterns that people try to emulate, extravagant purchases, trips to exotic locals, or product branding in conjunction with spokes modelling. An example of this we can see around campus here at SMU are the head phone brand beats by dre which are a bit on the expensive side. This upscale emulation centres on status, the message we send to the people around use about who we are and where we fit into the social hierarchy, if we don't have the latest fashion, or are using last years cell phone, than we appear to be lagging behind and are "bad consumers."

 Enter the credit card companies, through a loosening of requirements, allow us the privilege of living like the stars but place us in a perpetual debt cycle that forces us to work more for in order to temporarily maintain a life style beyond our spending means. When we walk into the store to look for that perfect thing for our friends and partners, maybe we can stop for second during this rushed time of year and think, why am I buying THIS, what is the message being sent, and what message did I receive about the product to bring me to this point. Of course the structure of consumption is modeled so that we are blind to these things. This isn't really about games, comics or popculture, but it's one of the many things attacking senses this time or year.