Consumer capitalism: now in ASMR

Please note: This post contains references and links to specific videos. These are used purely as examples of wider phenomena. The criticism contained here is directed equally at all similar content, and not specifically at the examples referenced here.

Happy consumption day

On the 16th and 17th July 2024 was a very special occasion. Or at least, that’s what Amazon would have you believe. The increasingly terrifying behemoth of retail, IT infrastructure and God knows what else declared these two days to be “Prime Day”, which it describes as “the biggest shopping event of the year… a celebration of the value we bring to members all year long, [which] features millions of deals across more than 35 product categories as well as discounts on Amazon devices, quality entertainment, groceries, travel, and more”. In other words, it’s a sale with a huge marketing budget. Advertising ran all over the internet. I received no fewer than six emails from Amazon where the subject line referenced Prime Day, one of which encouraged me to “Stay up late, Prime Day starts at midnight” and contained a large yellow link encouraging me to “get ready now”. That link leads to Amazon’s website, where I’m told that I can “join the party”. That same website wished customers “Happy Prime day” during the event, and the Amazon logo in the top left corner was replaced by a special Prime Day version.

So it seems Amazon is leaning very heavily into the image of Prime Day as an occasion to be celebrated in the same way one might celebrate, for example, a national holiday. They’re leaning into this so heavily that it’s possible to get caught up in the hype and forget what it actually is: a marketing gimmick. As I’ve already alluded to, the hype is entirely manufactured by Amazon, which has reached a size where it can make an impact by simply declaring something an important occasion. This post, though, is less about Amazon’s antics themselves, and more about the effects of them on social media.

The infomercials of the online world

Pick one of the social media platforms which is based on short-form video - Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and so on - for the term “Amazon Finds”, and watch a couple of the results. (I highly recommend doing this while not logged into an account - otherwise you’ll fill your recommendations feed with what basically amounts, as we’ll see shortly, to disguised advertising). This a whole genre of video, and it’s quite formulaic. A product is shown and the functionality is demonstrated, usually in a sequence of clips with hard cuts between them. Often, the clips are sped up to match the obligatory voiceover, which extolls the virtues of the product. Sometimes it’s even a synthetic text-to-speech voice. This is sometimes repeated several times for different products, and then the video inevitably ends with call to click a link to the product’s page on Amazon. The products themselves are typically moderately interesting but highly non-essential, portrayed as the solution to some fairly trivial everyday annoyance. The kind of thing that would be sold in an infomerical on a TV shopping channel.

Amazon Finds is to social media as the infomercial is to television. Compare this Finds video to this infomercial for the same product. Yes, the infomerical is longer and evidently a higher-budget production with additions such as demonstrations from paid actors, but they both follow the same “storyline” (so far as there is one), and they both share the critical feature of trying to blend into their form of media rather than standing out as advertising. Amazon Finds tries to be seen as a video made by a creator who has found the product recommending it to the audience - something that isn’t out of place on social media. Infomericals try to fit in as regular TV programmes despite being paid advertisments.

You might argue that I’m missing an important distinction here. Amazon Finds videos aren’t paid advertisments. Except I don’t believe it’s that clear-cut. Firstly, the creators of these videos may not be paid to speak about the products they feature, at least not directly, but it’s very common that they recieve commission for any sales generated as a result. That’s why these videos almost always include an link to the product - that link contains a special code which identifies to Amazon where you came from, and allows it to pay whoever sent you there through its Amazon Affiliate scheme. In some cases, creators can receive as much as 10% of the price you pay in return for directing you there.

Secondly, even if that incentive were not there, what difference would it make? Regardless of the intentions of the creators, their output is almost indistinguishable from an ad, and that means it has the same harmful effects as advertising would for the same products. It encourage people to purchase non-essential items that they would not otherwise want, and in doing so, leads to the arguably unnecessary manufacture and distribution of goods. This is hardly a good idea in a time when, if anything, society needs to be cutting back on its consumption on environmental grounds. Just as bad, the standards for levels of consumption set by this genre of content seem rather insensitive to the fact that much of the world is dealing with a huge spike in the cost of living, with more and more people left unable to afford the bare essentials for life. I don’t think a 5ft-tall fake tree really counts as a “must-have” by any definition, sorry.

Freshly distilled video content

Social media has had advertising for almost as long as it has existed, and it’s actually somewhat common to find advertising embedded within independently-produced content. Large YouTube personalities have had brand sponsorship deals for years. But typically it is seen by users as a necessary evil; something that we put up with as a price to pay for the true content we come for. Over time, that price has become greater and greater, with Internet users becoming the begrudging targets of greater and greater volumes of advertising (and more and more surveillance to work out where best to place it). I find Amazon Finds incredibly bizarre because it seems to have distilled this down to the point of absurdity. The true content has been removed entirely and fully replaced with advertising, and yet viewers still voluntarily watch it.

But we can distill even futher - and if we do we get something rather different and even more absurd. It’s called a “restock” video. If Amazon Finds is the infomercial of the social media world, then restock videos are the equivalent of writing an entirely contentless programme just to see how many product placements you can fit in a half-hour timeslot. As before, you can get a feel for this by searching for the term on your social media platform of choice and just watching a few of the results. But they usually start with an empty container or surface and show it being filled up with almost anything sold on Amazon. Rather than a voiceover narrator, the only sounds are those of the items being placed and moved around, occasionally but not usually with some light background music. In a way, it’s rather reminiscent of the concept of ASMR trigger videos - and it’s a consequence of stripping almost everything out of the video apart from the physical objects being portrayed.

Once again, I suspect the primary motivation for making these videos is to sell those objects via Amazon Affiliate links. However, there is a crucial distinction: while a typical Amazon Finds video might feature four or five products, a restock video can fit many more. Take a look at this video, then look at the number of product links underneath. There are ten of them - and that’s not even unusually many for this genre of video!

So, are these videos any better than Amazon Finds when it comes to encouraging responsible buying decisions? I don’t think so. In fact, though I have no firm evidence for this, my strong hunch is that they’re worse. This is because, while Amazon Finds seeks to make a concious argument in favour of the product, the format of restock videos simply sends a subliminal message that the featured items are normal things that any reasonable person would have around the house. In fact, the term “restock” embodies this - the “re” implies something mundane that you’ve done a million times before.

Take this “laundry restock” video for example. Sure, it features laundry detergent powder - which is pretty important for laundry - but it also features laundry detergent capsules - which are just a more expensive way of buying the same stuff as the powder - as well as fabric softener and “in-wash scent boosters”, neither of which is really a necessary or even common thing to have in my experience. And then, of course, there is the assortment of pretty glass jars and minimalist printed labels. All available from the creator’s Amazon Affiliate page, of course.

I’m sure this isn’t the direct intention, but the level of consumption shown here does seem to be trying to suggest that to do laundry, you need four different name-branded chemicals and an assortment of accessories, when you really don’t. But it works precisely because it’s presented as the normal way of doing things - it simply never occurs to you that going to a supermarket and buying a single big box of powder detergent would allow you to get laundry done just as effectively. (It doesn’t help that the list of these products on Amazon is titled “Laundry Essentials”. In this bizarre parallel consumerist universe, terms like “essential” and “must-have” are thrown around all over the place, usually innaccurately.)

And it’s not just laundry. There are restock videos for kitchens, bathrooms, and probably most other rooms you could think of.

Concluding thoughts

These videos may not technically be advertisments in the traditional sense. But if it walks like an ad and quacks like an ad, it’s hard to argue it won’t have the same effects as an ad would - even if the monetary structures behind it are different.

Of course, I don’t doubt that plenty of people out there like watching this kind of content, and if that’s you - enjoy it, by all means. But hopefully some awareness that you are basically watching a glorified marketing pitch will allow you to make better informed decisions about what exactly you choose to purchase.