Virtual Spending

Lisa’s thesis is about how graphic design can be used to make people not spend, instead of the traditional use of graphic design in advertising and marketing, where it is used to encourage people to spend. It looks at psychology, economics, and philosophy through the lens of media theory. She quotes Jean Baudrillard, Marshall McLuhan, Dan Ariely, Robert Cialdini, Juliet Schor and Robert Frank a lot.

Here’s the basic theory: the reason people spend too much is because they’ve anchored themselves to arbitrary numbers and lifestyle expressions. Media is responsible for presenting an unrealistic version of the world, and humans can’t help but compare themselves, their bodies and their lifestyles to this hyperreal world and still come up wanting. The hedonic treadmill of ever-increasing aspirations and competition means that we can’t be happy no matter how many goals we reach and how much stuff we buy.

Can you use virtual spending and virtual environments to moderate spending in real life? Albert C. Lin, an environmental law professor at UC Davis examined the possible use of shifting consumption from Real Life to Second Life in this paper, Virtual Consumption: A Second Life for Earth (2007). I recommend it. It’s honest about the extensive pros and cons of virtual consumption.

The reason virtual environments work as an alternative economy is because achievements that occur virtually work, in the brain, exactly like real achievements. The reward structures of games like World of Warcraft link immense psychological and game rewards to cooperative behaviour in the pursuit of defeating enemies and gaining stuff; there are Second Life shopping mavens who exist to buy things and tell people how good they look on their virtual persona. Sure, the stuff is imaginary. But humans are really good at making imagination real.  Dan Gilbert says that’s because our brains are fantastic simulator engines.

And the kicker is that any value assigned to something like a designer gown or a luxury watch is also hugely inflated beyond its manufacturing cost, its actual usage, and its relative quality. It’s imaginary, but it means something.

One other way to moderate behaviour is by presenting new anchor points. Wang Hao, a web editor from Beijing, found that he spent half of his income on the mortgage for his apartment, and somehow the rest was spent on lunches and dinners out during the week. He set a challenge for himself where he would live on 100 yuan a week from Monday through Friday, down from his previous 1000 yuan, and blogged about it. He now has a huge following on his blog, and is saving up to buy a car. Watch the CNN Video.

The challenge for Sophie and Sylvie is based on re-anchoring and limitations, as well as seeing how virtual worlds and environments can be used to mediate the painful process of resetting limits. Wang Hao’s 100 yuan is about $15 US in straight currency exchange, but in terms of purchasing power it’s more like $40 US or €30. This is adjusted upwards to €50 to cover weekends, because otherwise it would be an accounting nightmare.

The challenge for Lisa is to properly contextualize Sophie and Sylvie’s posts and observations.