Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected]
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
I'm going to go with a slightly unorthodox answer. Phones.
You don't need a new phone every year. You don't need a new phone every two years. You don't even need a phone every three years. Your old Galaxy S7 or iPhone 6 still works. Don't waste your money keeping up with the latest phone. So what if it has a slightly better camera? What are you taking pictures of? What does it really do that your old phone doesn't?
Once you properly consider everything you realise that you only really need to upgrade your phone every 4-5 years minimum. Many will last much longer.
This is lacking a target. It's not an example of keeping up with the Jones, it's just an opinion. A rather wild one in which you judge other's motivations as invalid.
The whole thing about "keeping up with the Joneses" is inherently about judging others' motivations as invalid.
WIth a phone, there are various reasons to want a new phone. But you certainly don't NEED one. The year-over-year improvements have largely become trivial. Mostly, camera upgrades marketed for impressing your peers. In any case, this tendency is certainly based on norms set by the marketing, which people follow. And there is some portion of this that is just conspicuous consumption.
I can't think of anyone who upgrades their phone other than normal hardware reasons, i.e.; cracked screens, decreased battery performance, etc.
Perhaps your peer group has a higher level of vanity around their phones than normal.
Can you provide a specific of someone you know upgrading their phone because their neighbor did so?
People who complain about others upgrading their phones are actually half a version of keeping up with the joneses.
Spending mental cycles on the possessions of others is the first criteria towards keeping up with the joneses, the second half is the purchase to keep up.
I worked at AT&T and then AT&T for about 8 years. I'm not talking about the anecdotal evidence of personal friends. I'm talking about broader consumer data.
For your information, here's a statistical study: https://www.statista.com/statistics/619788/average-smartphone-life/
This indicates an average of replacing a phone every ~2.7 years. That means there's someone that replaces their phone every year for each person who keeps their phone for 4 years. And many people keep them longer than that. Obviously, I'm not saying that EVERYONE does this. But obviously this is not uncommon.
I don't typically complain about this; it happens to be the topic of conversation here. It just sounds like you're taking it personally for some reason...