Tag: Devil in a Blue Dress

“Thus the decline of white bread coincided with a boom in so-called artisan bakeries, along with the growth of powerful franchises like the Great Harvest Bread Company. And because these bakeries were not using mass production techniques, their loaves cost significantly more than Wonder bread. But there was no shortage of consumers willing to pay premium rates in order to avoid being victims of consumerism and mass society. Again the counterculture proved to be the vital spark driving consumer trends. It is not an accident that San Francisco is the home of both the $3 latte and the $4 sourdough.”

Nation of Rebels, p. 153

“If countercultural thinking has led to a certain naiveté when it comes to crime, it has encouraged an almost unconscionable glamorization of mental illness”

Nation of Rebels, p. 143

“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

“Extreme sports are just sports for people who don’t want to be mistaken for jocks”

Nation of Rebels, p. 132

“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 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

“As soon as you go down the mass market road you lose control of who wears your product.”

Nation of Rebels, p. 127

“Because taste is grounded in the sense of distinction, it follows that not everyone can have good taste.”

Nation of Rebels, p. 125

“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

“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