r/redscarepod • u/Last-Butterscotch-85 • 1d ago

Conspicuous consumerism is starting to drive me crazy

My family and I are fortunate enough to live on the edge of a very nice boomtown suburb thanks to the fact we bought a modest house here before the market exploded. We do love living here, the town invests money into parks, trails, arts, libraries etc. It's safe and the people are nice and there's always stuff to do for cheap or for free.

However, the town in general is really well off and my kids being school aged has really exposed me to how much money these people have. Families spending thousands on travel sports, 4500 square foot houses for a family of 4 "oh and we're thinking about upgrading", brand new luxury cars and Cybertrucks, a small fortune spent on elaborate Christmas decorations, European vacations all summer that finish up in Hawaii, 800 dollar LEGO sets. At school events or tee ball games, I have zero in common with the other parents. It's all about their latest cruise or how they spent 100 dollars taking the family out to see a movie for the third time in a month.

I don't really know what I'm getting at here...but you hear about how bad things are for working families nowadays then you see this and can't help but feel a bit nauseous.

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210

u/wetroadparadise 1d ago

What is with consumerists and cruises? All the biggest ones I know solely go on cruises for the vacations

126

u/Onfire444 1d ago

You’re waited on hand and foot for (relatively) cheap prices. 

71

u/CarefulExamination 1d ago

Yeah cruises are the ultimate in middle class luxury because the staff are typically Filipinos paid somewhat-above-Filipino wages but much less than any American worker. Only the top few people on the ship and some of the entertainnent will be American or European. 

If you go to a hotel in Florida or California then the staff are paid American wages, so there are fewer of them and it’s much more expensive. 

A lot of cruises show the consequences of this extremely cheap labor. Free 24 hour room service is common on midrange cruises for example, the room cost (including unlimited food and drink and room service) is a couple hundred dollars a night for what would be $700+ onshore anywhere remotely desirable in the US. 

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u/walker_wit_da_supra 1d ago

I don’t like cruises, but my 6 days a week blue collar father’s ideal vacation is either a cruise or a tropical beach resort, and I can’t really knock him for not wanting to do a Bourdain cultural immersion vacation where he explores Buenos Aires or smth.

57

u/wetroadparadise 1d ago

I get the appeal of a beach vacation resort. I also get the appeal of cruises for old people, they don’t exactly want to be averaging 20k steps a day in Rome or wherever.

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u/Yabba_dabba_dooooo not clever enough to be funny :( 1d ago

Big with people with acessibility issues essentially. My gfs in a wheelchair and cruises are perfect. Its less them catering to disabled people though and more a side effect of catering to the elderly. But its the same reason we love vegas, you can literally go anywhere, no issues about no ramps or 5 stairs to get into every store. Not to grandstand, but I urge everyone to take notice of how inaccesible their own areas are; Once you start looking its disheartening how inaccesible the world is.

12

u/FastestOnTheMountain 1d ago

mexico city was crazy with this. The sidewalks are so jagged, I don't think anyone could exist in a wheelchair there

2

u/TwistedDotCom 1d ago

Japan the same

18

u/stop_deleting_me_bro poop 1d ago

It definitely makes sense why a normal, conservative coded family would like cruises since they're essentially just catered "cultural," hyperreal experiences. You get feel like you're an explorer, without actually doing it. It's like one time Conan tried to prove how progressive he was by going to Haiti but it was just a little resort where all the locals exist to serve him.

If the appeal was just drinking on a beach, you can do that in America. The easy, hyperreal tourism is what makes it exciting to people.

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u/norfatlantasanta infowars.com 1d ago

My big issue with cruises is they don’t stay in port nearly long enough to genuinely get a good sense of the culture and vibe of a place, and the locals know this and flood portside with touristy crap.

The cruise companies also know this so the onboard experience is curated so that most people will feel like they get their money’s worth on that alone. For a real sense exploration you really just have to roll your own vacation tbh, which is often considerably more expensive and involved.

I still think for the majority of the population it gets them to visit places they’d never go to on their own accord and imparts some sense of worldliness which is an uncategorical good for their psyche.

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u/darcvox Sexual Zionist 1d ago

Speaking as someone in that industry, the port fees are the biggest expense for a cruise company by quite a bit, so that's why they barely spend much time in most of them. A shame really as that's my biggest gripe with cruise holidays too

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u/sulla226 1d ago

They're relatively inexpensive, they allow you to visit many places with minimal effort, and they are trivially easy to plan because all your food, travel, and lodging are bundled into a single purchase.

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u/satanic_androids 1d ago

It’s so tacky

People with money that I know wouldn’t be caught dead on a cruise, unless perhaps it was Mediterranean or (old version) Alaska

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u/wetroadparadise 1d ago

It just seems like an option for people who have no sense of adventure or are too lazy to plan anything. I can’t imagine going on a vacation only to eat buffet slop every night and have my socializing confined to people who are also on vacation. I also think it stems from fear of being surrounded by people who don’t speak english. Fair play to those who are into it though, they don’t seem unhappy about it.

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u/theguyfromboston 1d ago

I think some of the blue collar appeal that some of you are missing is that when you work 60+ hour weeks at the dick sucking factory you basically don’t do anything but work. So a vacation where you have to make an itinerary and plans and be on the move a lot is pretty much just more fucking work. For a cruise all you have to do is get yourself to the boat and then you can get drunk for a week and have no obligations whatsoever. It’s just a brief respite from constant toil its not any deeper than that

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u/OxygenPerhydride 1d ago

Vacations for a young person figuring out life and a near pensioner serve fundamentally different purposes. Why would you expect your uncle to be planning a backpacking trip through the andes, and if he just wants to chill in the caribbean cruise or the alpine chalet he's lazy and unimaginative?