Now replace the word “thing” with “person.” It becomes: “A person is a person. Not what is said of that person.” Is it still true? How much of a person is determined by what is said of them versus their actual behaviour? In the information age, and more specifically, the age of digitalised personal branding, it seems our perceived appearance has surpassed the importance of our genuine one.
In this essay, I will use Psychiatrist Dr. William Glasser’s choice theory to examine how choice determines our behaviour and how that behaviour dictates our presentation of self and links intrinsically to the objects we associate ourselves with and our understanding of social relationships. At its core, Dr. William Glasser’s choice theory argues that behaviour is not separate from choice and we cannot control anyone’s behaviour but our own. To prove his theory, Glasser identifies and defines the “five basic human needs."
Dr. William Glasser argues that every choice we make works to fulfil one or more of our five basic human needs, those needs being: power, love/belonging, freedom, fun, and survival. All our choices, small and large, subconscious and conscious, reflect these inner desires. What drives us as social beings are wants. We think of what we want, behave to get what we want, and fantasise about what we want. As opposed to waking up and thinking, “I must meet my love and belonging need today,” one would instead think, “I’m going to ask my friend to see a film tomorrow night or get a drink and catch up.”
As soon as you fulfil one of these five basic human needs, you quickly replace the need with something else. As American social psychologist Frank T McAndrew said, “Perpetual bliss would completely undermine our will to accomplish anything at all – that’s why perfect contentment has probably been evolved out of us.”
We buy the objects we do because, consciously or subconsciously, we have discovered that they work to fulfil one or more of our five basic human needs. A poster of your favourite singer on your bedroom wall works to fulfil your love and belonging need because it’s someone you admire and it makes you feel like a part of a fan club. A karaoke machine works to fulfil your fun need because it helps you achieve pleasure and it makes you laugh. A car works to fulfil your freedom need because it makes you feel autonomous and in control.
All the objects I’ve chosen to display in my bedroom, work, in one way or another, to satisfy my five basic human needs, but they also work to create my image, or presentation of self. When someone walks into my room, they immediately get the idea of the kind of person I am. My likes, my taste, my values, how I want the world to see me, and what traits I like in others and have therefore adopted as my own.
Branding yourself through your objects is not a new concept, but the rise of social media, and more specifically Instagram, in the early 2010s, has ushered in a new age of hyper-image control and personal branding. Everything you choose to post, in addition to the objects you purchase, is a part of how you curate and present yourself to the world.
Everything I’ve ever posted on Instagram, whether I realised it at the time or not, acted to fulfil one of my five basic human needs. Posts about accomplishments worked to fulfil my power need because they made me feel recognised for my skills and gave me a sense of worth. Posts of me and my friends worked to fulfil my love/belonging need because they made me feel included in a group, accepted, and loved.
Just as studying objects can help us understand more about our social relationships, analysing our individual motives behind what we post, in line with Glasser’s choice theory, can help us understand our subconscious wants and how they manifest themselves into our online identities.
When a group of people use a similar personal branding technique, as is bound to happen, they form a subculture. Therefore, in selecting two objects that exemplify my analysis of choice theory's relationship to material culture, I looked to subcultures. In attempting to identify the subculture to which I belong, I pondered the famous ones: goths, hippies, bikers, nerds, etc., I settled upon one that I thought fit the bill most accurately and that is one of alternative culture, “alt” for short.
In exploring alternative culture and its relationship to material objects and the perception of self, I will be relying heavily upon Elizabeth Hay’s definition of “alt.” Hays writes, “Alt is an umbrella term encompassing elements of “Indie/Independent,” “Underground,” and related subcultures which are, in essence, a departure from the mainstream. Alt culture does not dramatically oppose this system. It does not ask you to live in a shack in the Ozarks, collecting firewood, smoking a pipe and mulling over the big questions, but rather embraces the gleeful freedom that modern life affords us. Alt is about turning the consumptive mechanism into a productive one, about the marriage of technology and creativity in every individual’s life. It’s about the simple systems of production and distribution, about goals within reach. It’s about the beautiful married with the superfluous. It’s about the dualistic employment of irony and sincerity, which, in their polar opposition, are actually twin ideologies.”
The objects I’ve selected for analysis are those of cornerstone value in alternative culture: The argyle sweater vest and the ironic/post-ironic tattoo.
THE SWEATER VEST
Popularised in post-World War I Britain, the argyle sweater vest remained a respectable clothing item until the 1980’s when it then became almost exclusively worn by grandfathers and golfers. The sweater vest was consequently shunned from popular fashion before becoming re-popularized by hipsters in the early 2010s and then appearing in designer editorials and being strutted down fashion week runways. It’s the classic journey of an Alt object.
As Tracy Moore writes, the sweater vest had all but “cement(ed) its status as something only worn by men who’ve given up or probably should,” but thankfully, alternative culture had other ideas. Alt culture is about resurrection, rebirth, so it’s somewhat poetic in a sense, but it’s also very narcissistic in another. In alt culture, every clothing item is a considered choice and every choice says something about you. The argyle sweater vest is no exception.
To keep up with alt trends, one must always evaluate what is uncool and how that can be flipped on its head. An art student wearing an argyle sweater vest while listening to Ariana Grande has adopted two practices from “uncool” cultures, golfing grandfathers and tween girls who listen to Top 100 hits, and combined them to create a hybrid new-age-thinker of infinite tastes. But where does that leave the flannel-and-Doc-Martens-wearing, Sonic-Youth-listening, classic “hipster” of yesteryears? Left to shudder in the shadows of post-irony I suppose. But those lamenting former trends need not fear, because alternative culture is cylindrical. Just as a trend becomes uncool, we can rely on the fact that a decade or two down the line it will be resurrected by the alts of future generations.
THE IRONIC/POST-IRONIC TATTOO
Irony and change are essential pillars to alternative culture, which is why the ironic tattoo is a fascinating paradox. Its irony makes it inherently alt, while its permanence contradicts the ever-changing and malleable nature of alternative culture.
The alt movement has been able to survive for generations because of its participants’ willingness to change. Whereas by now the punks and hippies have all but faded into history, alts are willing to change with the years. What’s uncool now will be cool next season and vice versa. While we dread the day the argyle sweater vest goes back out of style and something else uncool (Crocs? Cargo shorts? Macklemore? Prep?) becomes cool, we embrace this change because we know it’s how the subculture is able to adapt and survive.
As Elizabeth Hays writes, “(Alt) is about the dualistic employment of irony and sincerity, which, in their polar opposition, are actually twin ideologies.” Alts don’t shun all things popular, they embrace the pretty good aspects of pop culture with playful irony.
Because irony is such a formative feature of alt culture, alts have already entered the early stages of post-irony. Post-irony is loosely defined as “ironic appreciation that becomes genuine, due to either prolonged exposure or the enjoyment derived from how amusingly terrible it is.”
In line with these two definitions, there is a distinct difference between the ironic and post-ironic tattoo. The ironic tattoo adopts the timeless aesthetic of the art form, see: I Love Mom, The Skull and Crossbones, and The Mermaid. Its irony exists in its banality. It’s the first choice in a laminated booklet of possible options at the tattoo parlour. The Post-ironic tattoo is more paradoxical because it adopts the fleeting, changing nature of alternative culture while acting as an imposing permanence. Examples include but are not limited to: a commemorative pet tattoo and Britney Spears song lyrics printed in Renaissance-style script.
We choose how we interpret objects, whether we see them psychologically or philosophically, and the ironic nature of alternative culture lends itself much more to that of a psychological viewpoint. Alts buy objects and attach sincerity, irony, ambiguous irony, or post-irony to them. The layers and statements often become muddled, but it makes the objects fascinating to study in their relation to choice, behaviour, and social relations. While everyone tackles the age-old problem of individuality in their own way, alts, as New York Times writer Christy Wampole puts it, “tend to negotiate this problem with material things rather than concepts.”
Why do we methodically choose how we present ourselves as opposed to just “being ourselves,” as so many inspirational posters have instructed us to do? Because, as writer Adam Grant once said, “Unless you’re Oprah, 'Be Yourself' is terrible advice.”
It’s a part of our five basic human needs to feel wanted, accepted, and admired, which means we will direct our choices in the way of objects that will make us feel that way. To buy particular objects is to become a part of a subculture and feel a part of a group. To start a trend within said subculture is to feel recognised and accomplished. The objects we buy help construct our choice which in turn dictates our behaviour.
I conclude this essay as I began it, and that is with a quote from the film Birdman. The film, in brief synopsis, is about washed-up comic book actor Riggin Thompson who is the process of directing and starring in his own Broadway adaptation of a Raymond Carver novel. Right before opening night, he runs into New York Times theatre critic Tabitha Dickinson who tells him, with full confidence, that she will kill his play. He gets frustrated and begins to read a review she’s in the process of writing out loud,
“Lackluster… that’s just a label, marginality - that’s a label. These are all labels. You just label everything, that's so lazy. He then picks up a flower ans says, "Do you know what this is? Do you even know what that is? You don't. You know why? Because you can't see this thing if you don't know how to label it."
How we label, choose, and interact with objects has everything to do with our five human needs and how they manifest themselves into our presentation of self. In studying objects, understanding what they are at their core and the labels we assign to them, we can better understand how much our choices dictate our individualized worlds.
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