My professor asked me a question today, he said:
I study a lot about metaphors and “consuming” and “consumer” as we use these terms today especially interest me. But what do you think of this: We don’t “consume” computers or cars, we “use” them. But when computer and car companies think of their customers, they speak of them as “consumers.”
Here was my response…
What they are trying to sell us, is not so much a product, but an idea. We consume their rhetoric, their ideals, and their sales pitches. Day in and day out, we are hypnotized to think we need products to be fulfilled, to be independent, or to be satisfied.
I think in this way – we are all consumers.