“While countercultural rebellion probably attracts no more kooks than any other movement, it is peculiarly ill equipped to deal with them once they arrive.”
Nation of Rebels, p. 137
As That Would Be Bad
“Extreme sports are just sports for people who don’t want to be mistaken for jocks”
Nation of Rebels, p. 132
How Our Markets Are Full of What No One Can See
“Ever since the 1960s, hip has been the nature tongue of advertising, ‘antiestablishment’ the vocabulary by which we are taught to cast off our old possessions and buy whatever they have decided to offer this year. And over the years the rebel has naturally become the central image of this culture of consumption, symbolizing endless directionless change, and eternal restlessness with ‘the establishment’—or, more correctly, with the stuff ‘the establishment’ convinced him to buy last year”
Nation of Rebels, p. 130
The Anti-Club Club is Very Popular
“The problem, of course, is that not everyone can be a rebel, for the same reason that not everyone can have class and not everyone can have good taste. If everyone joins the counterculture, then the counterculture simply becomes the culture . . . ‘The club’ becomes less and less elite. As a result, the rebel has to move on to something new. Thus the counterculture must constantly reinvent itself. This is why rebels adopt and discard styles as fashionistas move through the brands”
Nation of Rebels, p. 129
How Rapidly the Hot Cool Cools
“As soon as you go down the mass market road you lose control of who wears your product.”
Nation of Rebels, p. 127
Which Means Your Velvet Elvis Has to Go
“Because taste is grounded in the sense of distinction, it follows that not everyone can have good taste.”
Nation of Rebels, p. 125
Those Darn Other People
“Whenever you look at the list of consumer goods that (according to the critic) people don’t really need, what you invariably see is a list of consumer goods that middle-aged intellectuals don’t need . . . consumerism, in other words, always seems to be a critique of what other people buy.”
Nation of Rebels, p. 105
Including the Distinction of Not Caring About Distinction
“In other words, it’s the nonconformists, not the conformists, who are driving consumer spending. This observation is one that anyone working in advertising will find crushingly obvious. Brand identity is all about product differentiation; it’s about setting the product apart from others. People identify with brands because of the distinction that they confer”
Nation of Rebels, pp. 103-104
Shrink Wrapped Rebellion
‘They identify consumerism with conformity. As a result, they fail to notice that it is rebellion, not conformity, that has for decades been the driving force of the marketplace . . . what if countercultural rebellion, rather than being a consequence of intensified consumerism, were actually a contributing factor?”
Nation of Rebels, p. 99
Criticism of the Mainstream is Mainstream
“In fact, the critique of mass society has been one of the most powerful forces driving consumerism for the past forty years”
Nation of Rebels, p. 98.