Why Everyone Is Suddenly An Adult Toddler
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In this month's video essay, we're expanding on last month's exploration of consumer culture to talk about its evil twin: convenience culture. Chelsea unpacks how the way we buy has become almost as important as what we're actually buying.
SPECIAL THANKS TO:
-Sabrina Ryan
-Celeste Lopreiato, founder of The Conscious Farm Kitchen:
SOURCE LINKS:
00:00-02:58 Intro
02:59 Ad Break
05:30 Intro continued
08:54 The Gig Economy: Where There's An App For Everything
27:10 Outsourcing Adulthood aka The Entitled Generation
35:23 Amazon Prime and The Tyranny of Free Shipping
44:04 The Rise and The Curse of Tap To Pay
48:09 Who Actually Pays For Convenience?
56:22 Conclusion
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I’ll be honest. I saw the video title and now I want chicken nuggets.
😆😆😆
But only the dinosaurs ones
🦖
😂
I literally just got done eating chicken tenders
My biggest level up for managing my life like an adult has been a task management system (like Asana, Monday, or Todoist). Now, I proactively tackle recurring tasks, and can also make reminders for one-of tasks to do them at some specific time. It has helped me take up so much more mental load off of my wife and place it onto me.
America are filthy nation
I deleted the Amazon app a couple of months ago and haven’t looked back. Cutting out the convenience has drastically helped my spending!
And the environment!
Same. It was to much of an easy access for me.
I do this with uber eats, i still occasionally get it but I have to log in on my browser and go through the whole login flow + 2FA process, I can’t just mindlessly open it
Same! But here in Argentina it’s Mercadolibre the app that makes you buy crap you don’t need.
Me too!
Best and easiest thing I did was start writing down any discretionary spend in my phone notes section. Everything. That way I can keep track of how much I am spending and modify.
same!
In the 1950s, Betty Crocker came out with a cake mix. All you had to do was add water and stick the cake in the oven. It didn’t sell well and when the company did focus groups, they found that housewives wouldn’t buy the cake because of guilt. Betty Crocker added eggs and milk to the recipe on the box and suddenly the cake mix sold well again. Betty Crocker’s focus groups found that female consumers felt an obligation to work hard baking a cake from scratch in order to please their husbands and guests. That obligation is bullshit – so make sure you don’t take the anti-convenience too far. If there truly isn’t any harm caused by the convenience, we shouldn’t make our lives harder than they have to be. There is enough pressure on women to be perfect already.
I agree with your sentiment that we shouldn’t be putting more pressure on women to be perfect, nor should we shun “convenience”. I think some people might forget the good things about convenience. What about the sick or elderly or the stay-at-home moms with young children that really appreciate conveniences such as the home delivery of essentials like food, medicine and diapers? There are truckers that drive those same essentials to the stores for our convenience. What’s the difference if it’s put on another truck and driven right to our doors so that we don’t have to waste hours of our time getting it in person?
Where does it end? If people really want to shun “convenience” why don’t they give up all of their appliances? Why not live off grid with no power or Internet? Why not sell their cars and walk everywhere? All of these things are modern conveniences, which we should feel grateful for.
I have never succeeded in baking a cake from scratch. What I get is 9” round 1/2 inch thick doorstops. What a waste of time and ingredients….I’ll take a box cake mix, doctored or plain, any time!
When i moved out from my parent’s home and started living alone I came up with making «emergency cake jars»- mixed flour, cinnamon,sugar and baking powder in little jars just enough for a cake or 6 muffins – in case of an unplanned friend visit, which happened often . Then somebody told me that «cake mix» was a thing…still don’t get the idea- it takes like 5 minutes to mix.
As someone wi does a gig job occasionally, I appreciate the fact that i can expect more business in bad weather. Chelsea is a bit obnoxious to pretend she can speak for everyone because of the one testimonial she recorded. 🙄
@@faithli2131nowadays virtually all takeout delivery drivers choose when they work. They make their own schedule. If they’re delivering takeout in the rain it’s completely their choice.
Another great, and considerate video from TFD! I stopped my amazon prime years ago – I find it to be much better to buy things locally. There are times when I do need to order from amazon, but when you don’t use it that often they are always trying to entice you into getting prime by giving you a free month. In those desperate situations, I will take the free month, buy the things I need, and then immediately cancel the membership. Even if you cancel immediately after activation, you still get the benefits for the full month.
That’s very smart truthfully my husband and I hardly order off Amazon. We should just cancel it
Same – my family shares an account, and I mainly use it for the discount at Whole Foods and the streaming services. I buy something online maybe once per year, and that’s usually because I’ve exhausted the local options. I’d rather walk in a store and see/handle the product than order it.
I have to say I chuckle when I think of the negativity around the new age conveniences, when back in the day people could have literally all of their staples delivered to their homes on a daily or near daily basis (milkman anyone?).
True. Mostly because in the case of my neighborhood, the mother stayed home with the kids and didn’t have access to a car. We also had a fruit and vegetable truck that used to come by. All the kids loved the vendor – such a wonderful man.
True, but a big difference is that those services were sustainable and less bad for the environment. Glass milk bottles were reused. They were also good jobs with benefits and labor unions. They were also members of the community—people knew the milkman (some people knew the milkman VERY well, lol!). Actually, the milkman is a great example of all of the things Chelsea is advocating for in this video: ethical convenience.
@@midorisour2844 Can confirm. My father was a milkman in the ’80s. Every milkman had the same route, and they knew what people would need. It was also a pretty laid-back job, and he’d have coffee breaks at people’s houses. Neighbors would meet almost daily when the milkman came. So it was very much a community thing.
I do think rideshare apps greatly improved on the taxi model, at least for consumers. I remember our crew missing a flight out LaGuardia once after a work event, because every cab we wasted time flagging down refused to drive to the airport from Manhattan. Also, the number of times I was wildly overcharged for a cab ride because a driver knew I was unfamiliar with the area and took me on a very “scenic route.” I love knowing how much my ride is going to cost me BEFORE I get in the car, not after I’ve arrived at my destination and am frantically trying to scrape together cash for a trip that should have been $20, but was now closer to $30. In my opinion, that industry needed to be shaken up.
It absolutely did. But it also needs more regulation.
Industries in general need to be shaken up regularly. With regulation.
I just take the train to the airport. It’s superior to taxi/rideshare. Not every city has a train to the airport but most places I travel do.
I’m a big fan of TFD but I don’t know about this video, and so I’m going to write a big wall of text…
As democratic socialists, I think you all understand that individual consumer habits cannot and do not change the behavior of corporations. That’s why things like labor rights and anti-trust laws exist, because the owning class will always have a financial incentive to exploit the working class and behave it ways that minimize overhead and maximize profit. That’s not saying that boycotts and stuff like that don’t work, but saying people should stop using Doordash if possible is not a boycott. The treatment of gig workers is a result of 1) legislative incompetence, and 2) massive lobbying efforts by corporations to be allowed to call their employees contractors to avoid paying any kind of benefits, or even paying them a minimum wage.
A few years ago I decided to never use Amazon next day shipping again because of the issues that your guest mentioned. Using next day shipping made me feel bad, and not using it made me feel a little better, like I was less complicit in the problem. But me not using same day shipping has literally no tangible effect on any amazon worker ever. Market share was not affected by me limiting myself to one order a month. Conversely, I don’t have a car and live in an area without reliable public transit, so when I can’t get a ride to the store, I use Instacart. I use the app about once a month, and I feel I have a pretty good reason when I do. But that doesn’t mean that Instacart is going to treat the employee getting my groceries better.
When it comes to labor rights and economic policy, I think it can be dangerous to moralize the use of certain goods or services, because then it becomes very easy to just say we should eliminate those services altogether even when they do a lot of good for people, and provide a lot of jobs. Most people I know that work for gig apps are either trying to make some extra money on the side (adding an additional stream of income, something this channel recommends), or they literally can’t find another job. Workers aren’t being exploited because Gen Z and millennials have become uniquely selfish and lazy, it’s because these apps employ vulnerable people who have no other options.
Hear hear! Excellent point. It’s not enough to vote for with your dollar, you have to vote with your effing vote. Americans (and the rest of the globe) are going to have a rude awakening come January. Canada is bracing for a recession, I recommend the rest of you do the same. Yes, things are rough now. They’re about to get so much worse, including cost of living and workers protections. I mean, ahem, all hail our corporate overlords.
If anyone isn’t sure what I’m referring to, do yourself a favour and actually look up what tariffs are, and then maybe google how 2025 tariffs will affect your country. Even our conservative premiers, who have their tongues waaaaay up a certain incoming president’s butthole, are freaking out.
May we all take the next 4 years as a big f’n lesson on corporate interference in government, and how even once semi-socialist countries like Canada are barreling towards a “free market” economy that will nickel and dime us to death and not have the decency to pay us a decent wage or benefits while we bleed out.
good wall of text 👍
TLDR: it’s not just about who you choose NOT to support through your purchases, it’s also how your purchases can have a positive influence at a local level.
I agree that your purchasing decisions are unlikely to have an effect on the big company you are trying to avoid. But purchasing decisions are not just about having a negative effect they also have a positive one. For example, I am lucky to have many bric-a-brac shops on my local high street which sells many of the things people would order from Amazon for convenience (and for the same price if you account for delivery/subscriptions). Those shops are a dying breed because of the move towards e-commerce even though they provide a very tangible service to their communities. The trend over all is less middle class-owned small shops which provide people with financial autonomy and consolidation of retail where one corporation is taking a bigger cut and work is more precarious for all the gig workers working for them. We need antitrust too, but this does have a positive effect at the local level.
Millennials are in our 30s and 40s. Stop blaming us for your perceived problems with “kids now days.” We’re not lazy. We’re overworked, overstretched parents who are also a part and impacted by the current state of things…not some magical group of “others” that is complicit in a separate system that hurts just you.
Not using delivery apps during bad weather for morality reasons is a weird argument. If nobody orders stuff, drivers can’t work – no demand = no pay. Drivers are willing to go out on the roads regardless because they NEED money, and they aren’t afforded paid time off. It’s like saying unpaid factory work is morally wrong because of occupational hazard, when the actual issue is insufficient compensation + benefits. On the flip side, firefighters are in incredibly dangerous work but are compensated well – it’s about how society/systems value your labour.
Regardless of all of this, consumers (myself included) don’t understand the true cost of products and goods. Cheap stuff is not supposed to be THIS cheap…. the cost is being paid by someone else somewhere (suppressed wages, poor working conditions, outsourcing, etc).
in my country, we had this discussion of using app during bad weather and all the drivers said they prefer working during bad weather because they are paid more when it’s raining or anything. sooo, I wait the heavy rain stops and order during the drizzle, cause I believe they app won’t know if it’s heavy rain or just a drizzle
But I don’t think that is what the video is advocating. I don’t think it’s main point is that consumers and gig workers are to blame. I think it’s asking us to consider standing in solidarity with fellow workers and apply pressure to change the system when we can because maybe the system is screwing all if us to varying degrees. Sometimes that might mean inconveniencing ourselves including considering whether or not we order deliveries in hazardous weather. Firefighters in the US might earn more than gig workers but I would argue that’s not just down to how ‘society or the system’ values their works it’s more because they are unionized. Even then think how long firefighters had to fight and campaign for Congress to agree compensation post the debilitating effects firefighters had to battle post their service during 9/11. These systems aren’t neutral or objective and maybe with solidarity we can change them.
@@SeekingDialogue I can agree with this perspective for sure. I don’t use food delivery apps anyway because ordering in food doesn’t make sense for me financially. Although these services were never meant to be full-time jobs (thinking specifically about uber/eats). They were supposed to give people who already owned a car an opportunity to make a few more bucks. Still, I’m curious how far proper compensation would drive up pricing and if it would kill the appeal of centralized food delivery for good.
@@SeekingDialogue you’re not standing in solidarity with me if you’re boycotting the company I work for. I don’t get paid if I don’t deliver.
I have a friend who said it impacted her town when they got mail delivery to the house instead of having to pick it up at the post office. Sure it was more convenient, but people used to chat together at the post office and that connection was lost. On a different note, many of the seniors I know, including my 90 year old mother, get home grocery delivery. It is safer for them to not drive anymore, they don’t have to go out in the rain or snow, and they have acesss to fresh food so they can still live independently and cook their own meals. Convenience is a double edged sword.
+ a close familial structure where the younger generation takes care of things like groceries for the older generation is also a more social version than at-home grocery deliveries, but family structure is slowly disintegrating either way.
@francookie9353 maybe if the older people didn’t gleefully mangle us when we were younger, there would be less disintegration.
@M4rkeritaville Yep or now get mad at boundaries when we tell them “hey don’t force my child to cuddle or kiss you, they have bodily autonomy” and suddenly you’re blocking them from seeing their grandchild (apparently) and they won’t talk to you anymore (even though they claim to want to see their grandkids)
True convenience would be if cars were not a necessity and actual necessities were accessible within walking distance of your neighborhood
@@W0Rd0n32sTre3T Absolutely. Big stores outpriced all the small corner stores that made daily necessities easily accesible then sold us the solution to not being able to go 5 minutes to the next store. Same with easily accesible doctors and other necessities.
Some of these conveniences are really good for people with disabilities. Making them affordable for people that really do need things delivered for them. It’s complicated.
Or people who work fulltime jobs. Idk about you all, but working fulltime, cooking and keeping the house clean is for me impossible. I was in a constant state of burnout before I started outsourcing some parts of my weekly tasks.
@@BS-xs7jb i don’t see her demanding. i see her using what is available. and you can be lobbying for change (which is expensive – better get to fundraising!!) while our friend up there is utilizing the convenience services available to her. it’s not mutually exclusive. i hope you understand that.
and why are disabled people not getting help in a different form? well, because that’s socialism, which makes 33% of the country incredibly fearful.
if it costs you money to do your gig work job, then dont’ do the gig work job. it’s pretty simple.
‘convenience culture is killing us
here is an ad for convenience therapy’
…i know sponsorships are just a thing you have do deal with, but damn that whiplash x.x
ʟᴇs’ᴛ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ᴀ ᴄᴏɴᴠᴇʀsᴀᴛɪᴏɴ ɢᴏᴛ sᴏᴍᴇᴛʜɪɴɢ sᴘᴇᴄɪᴀʟ ғᴏʀ ʏᴏᴜ 🤍🤍sᴇɴᴅ🤍🤍ᴍᴇ🤍🤍ᴀ🤍🤍ᴅɪʀᴇᴄᴛ🤍🤍ᴛᴇxᴛ🤍±𝟣𝟦𝟢𝟪𝟫𝟢𝟧𝟩𝟨𝟧𝟥🔝
“we should improve society somewhat” meme :p
Betterment is not therapy, it’s an investment company. You’re thinking of BetterHelp.
I love this video but please take into account: There were people before (mostly women) doing the convenience work for the family.
Fe my aunt was always working full time as a boomer, but my grandma was cooking for her, her husband and her daughter.
The labour is always there, we have to just value and acknowledge it.
@ I want to say : we are not the first generation to use convenience services. We are the first to pay for it. And obviously (esp in the us) not enough.
This! Converting unpaid labour to paid labour can decrease inequality. Bashing “lazy millenials” for going out for latte and avocado toast is often a front for trying to push women back into the kitchen to do the cooking and entertaining for free. (Not something I see TFD doing here.) If everyone, including the men, pitches in equally not just with effort in the moment but also by learning to cook well, learning to accomodate multiple preferences and allergies and learning how to plan and prepare parties, I do think that would be amazing, but will this happen in 2024?
@@aquamar1003we’re not even the first to pay. The milkman is a trope for a reason, you used to have milk delivered. The grocer would go around middle class houses taking orders and then delivering them later that day, same with the butcher. Household employees such as maids and cooks. More than 1.3 million people were in domestic service in England in the Edwardian period. More than there were farmers. More than there were coal miners. We are only the third generation (as a millennial) where human labour is more expensive than goods. We’re really just going back to the historical norm.
I think that the real issue is that the gig-style jobs aren’t paying a reasonable amount of money… being a maid was generally a job for a young woman (in Edwardian times as someone mentioned), being a milkman paid enough to sustain a person’s wages, etc. These gig workers are not young or inexperienced, and they only pay “well” if you overwork yourself, and still don’t offer any real benefits. It’s a bunch of jobs where people willing to spend the money are offloading the social responsibility onto others who don’t have that luxury (similar to what happens with cheap clothes made in china or Bangladesh). I would almost go as far as to say that this type of work increases inequality.
I’d like to ad a different perspective. My partner and I both work fulltime and we have two school aged kids. Making use of online grocery shopping, meal delivery once a week, clothes/errand shopping online, etc, is a necesity to sustain this model. If these services are not in place you run the risk of pushing back women into the home at the expense of their career and financial independence. I see these services as facilitating emancipation of women. However this should not come at the expense of workers, fair waged are key and I support that whole heartitly.
It’s kind of a parallel to how (white middle-class) women fully entered the workforce. Great for their financial emancipation, but overall wages went down as a result of the workforce almost doubling.
Wages shouldn’t have gone down. It’s true that they did, but that wasn’t women’s fault and shouldn’t be used as an argument for them to leave the workforce again (as it sometimes is in certain circles).
It always comes back to the corporations. Individual (consumer) guilt isn’t the answer.
Now, how do we get corporations to act right?
@@francookie9353 i mean, women have always been in the work force? like poor women and women of color were still in the work force even when the “middle class” white lifestyle pushed women back into the home en masse after ww2
Kudos to you for being able to use convenience to your advantage. But that’s the key really- you use it to your advantage whereas others let it take advantage of their already shallow pockets that they work too hard to sustain. A lot of people honestly shouldn’t have credit cards and should do cash stuffing. They go online, get advertised to, and lose sight of the mission, get super sidetracked. These convenience services are really nice when used properly. Throw everything in your target cart during lunch, pay, drop by and pick up after work. Way faster than shopping in store, and you got exactly what you needed and not more (hopefully).
Yeah I recently started shopping for groceries on my commute home and then picking it up on the next day. What a time saver.
There has to be come part of this that is about not just convenience but pleasure. Like wanting a more elaborate meal every night. The reality is you could make a huge pot of lentil or chicken soup, rice and veggies, and eat it with bread every day for a week, and it would serve your nutritional needs, be quicker over all, save money and save the planet. But that is “boring” and hence why “adult toddler”.
I’m reading More Work for Mother right now and I think this video would have benefited from a historical perspective.
“Convenience” services, aka commercialization of household labor, have been tried since the 19th century and many have become so normal we don’t even notice they once were household labor. Some others weren’t socially accepted or successful.
They were also attempted for different reasons and in different forms. There have been laundry co-ops, for example, as charitable measures for people who couldn’t afford in-home laundry, and as a tool for empowerment for women.
I think it’s good to be critical of these developments, and the way they’re implemented. But that doesn’t mean they’re all bad or some new thing that means we’re all weak and our generation is doomed (at least not for this reason alone).
The title is a bit click-baitey but I think it aligns with your general point. I don’t think the video’s overall message is an anti-convenience one; I think it’s critical of the business models underpinning much of the newer technology-facilitated convenience. I think it’s as nuanced as your excellent comment is.
Interesting topic but I personally believe that individual convenience is not the problem – it’s the structure that we have given it. It’s great to have convenience choices, great to make things easier and faster, it helps increasing flexibility and thus possibilities. What we need is a fair structure for it, where everybody wins. Nobody needs to order take out 7x a week, but it’s good to a have choice – even if it costs more. The only thing we need to fix is the COST of convenience so that it acurately reflects the labour that is going into it. IMO, it doesn’t need to go – it just needs some perspective.
I would also point out as a user of for example walmart plus and ordering food once a week, this is not a convenience purchase for me but a money saver. I do not own a car. While I can afford to own a car, auto insurance, maintenance, parking, and fuel costs, I have estimated to be around $200-300 a month. I can bike wherever I need to be(college), so these are the only things I need a car for. compared to that with the “convenience purchasing” I spend ~$50 a month. that’s a huge difference. not even accounting for the initial purchase of a vehicle. So some of this also boils down to car culture.
You are probably underestimating your savings.
I’m neurodivergent and work a stressful job in stem. After work I’m totally exhausted and am not able to handle going into the sensory environment of the grocery store and interacting with people. Grocery delivery has been life changing — I am much more healthy as a result.