In a world of mass consumption, be unique!

By Ryan Snider, Staff Writer 

Let’s face it; life can be boring. In a world of mass consumption, you’re not the only one with stuff. Probably hundreds to thousands of people wear the same clothes and use the same things as you do. And that can be completely fine! I mean, it wouldn’t be popular if it wasn’t cool, right? For most people, that’s completely acceptable.

But maybe you have that urge—that itch—to customize your stuff.

Or plaster something with stickers.

Or draw doodles all over your notebooks (and homework).

Or just making something that’s boring, something COOL!

Take my water bottle, for example. I bought a White Yeti. It’s a phenomenal water bottle; it keeps my water cold all day long.

But it was bland. Not interesting at all.

So what did I do? 

I took a sharpie and doodled all over it. Spaceships, Charlie Brown, Floating Eyeballs, the whole sha-bang. 

Now it’s a one of one. There’s only one water bottle on the earth that looks like mine. Of course, that doesn’t make it objectively cool. Style is completely different person to person—it’s subjective.

But I encourage you to add your own flair to your stuff. I love to draw, so my flair was doodles.

Maybe you like flowers! Try embroidering flowers on your clothes (check out James Merry’s embroidery on sports hoodies). Or what if you like music? Try making custom CDs for your friends and yourself! (If your computer has a CD drive, it can probably burn CDs with Windows Media Player). The list goes on.

Basically, the possibilities are endless, which I realize is cliche. But I think it’s cool. When something is custom, it shows you want to go above and beyond to make it unique. And maybe it’ll turn out dorky! But sometimes there’s a unique charm to that.

I guess what I’m getting at here is that in a world of mass consumption, it’s hard to be different. The stuff you buy is probably the same stuff everybody else is buying.

So why not try and make that stuff unique and customize it?