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Conspicuous Consumption: Difference between revisions
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''There would be one long staircase just going up,
''And one even longer coming down,
''And one more leading nowhere, just for show.''
|''[[Fiddler on the Roof]]'', "If I Were a Rich Man"}}
In a nutshell, conspicuous consumption is any extravagant spending that has no real purpose other than just to show off someone's wealth. Sometimes this leads to a vicious cycle of "keeping up with the Joneses", when two people or families each feel that they need to buy more things to show they're just as wealthy as the other, sometimes going [[Up to Eleven]].
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== [[Comic Books]] ==
* [[Richie Rich (comics)|Richie Rich]] had gold-plated, gem-studded ''everything''. Conspicuous Consumption is the ''only'' joke in his comics: mundane gadgets festooned with precious metals and minerals, landscaping feature like hedges and swimming pools shaped like dollar signs, the immense size of the Rich estate (requiring multiple ZIP codes, needing its own transit system), and so on, ''ad nauseum''.
== [[Film]] ==
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* ''[[GTAIV]]'' parodies it with the in-game TV show "I'm Rich", including obvious parodies of people like Paris Hilton and others.
** ''The Ballad of Gay Tony'' introduces Yusuf Amir, who spends his money on [[Bling Bling Bang]], [[Hookers and Blow]], and ridiculous vanity projects like building the tallest skycraper in Liberty City. Since he apparently has the money to buy ''anything'', the only use he has for the player character is to steal "the things they ''won't'' sell him", like military hardware.
* [[
== [[Web Comics]] ==
* Both Ricci and his manager in ''[[Fite!]]'' sport solid gold jewelry once Ricci gets the belt.
* In [
== [[Web Original]] ==
* ''[[Cracked.com]]'' has a list [https://web.archive.org/web/20131030041941/http://www.cracked.com/article/188_7-great-products-telling-world-youre-rich-dick/ of real life ways to show off wealth].
** An episode of Cracked's ''Does Not Compute'' deals with the Numi, a real life $6500 toilet that comes with a tablet PC to pick various settings like seat temperature, bidet control, and a selection of music. Yes, music, which was composed specifically for the Numi.
* A [[Running Gag]] among the creators of ''[[Kingdom of Loathing]]'' is that the [[Bribing Your Way to Victory|players' donations]] go towards "solid gold Ferraris".
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* An ''[[Alvin and The Chipmunks]]'' episode had Simon develop a device that could look into possible futures. One was where the chipmunks and chipettes were incredibly wealthy. They bought their kids guitars made of diamonds, with ruby picks, and there were apparently emerald strings.
* Some of [[Goldie Gold and Action Jack|Goldie Gold's]] has a few of these that aren't even gadgets, like a diamond studded nail clipper.
* Similarly, ''[[Richie Rich (comics)|Richie Rich]]'' ''lived'' this trope. Fuel for thought comes when you contrast his typical attire of a sweater with the letter R on it (or a black jacket and shorts when he was younger) to his hyper-luxurious lifestyle. It's almost as if he's Zen'd past needing to display personal bling. One ''[[Robot Chicken]]'' skit plays with this, and mixes Richie with a black rapper stereotype.
* In ''[[The Simpsons]]'':
** Episode "Dog of Death" Homer imagines that if he won the lottery he would become the worlds largest man and be covered entirely in [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGakoCpN7kI gold].
** The original creator of Itchy and Scratchy used the money from his settlement to buy a solid gold house.
* In the ''[[Disney Ducks Comic Universe]]'', everything Scrooge McDuck owns is an example of this.
* A mother of another girl in ''[[Totally Spies!]]'' bought a clothing chain just to get the last of a pair of exclusive shoes.
* In the ''[[Futurama]]'' movie Bender's Big Score, Earth is taken over by alien scammers who buy a fleet of solid gold, [[Gem-Encrusted]] [[Star Wars|death stars]] to defend it.
* When Peter Griffin of ''[[Family Guy]]'' got a 150,000 welfare check every week, the first thing he did was rent the Statue of David.
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* Live-in servants. The development of household appliances through the twentieth century reflects the increasing difficulties of finding decent hired help. The proliferation of the flush toilet in middle-class households, for instance, was due in large part to the burgeoning reluctance of increasingly better-paid servants to regularly empty and clean receptacles for other peoples' shit.
* This can apply to excessive [[Pimped-Out Dress|Pimped Out Dresses]] and [[Costume Porn]].
* The topic illustration of the gold-plated Macintosh laptop is from an [https://web.archive.org/web/20131108204311/http://www.computer-choppers.com/ actual company that gold-plates consumer electronics].
** Macs aren't alone. For a while, [[Voodoo PC]], which makes high-end gaming [[
* [[wikipedia:I Am Rich|"I Am Rich"]], a short-lived iPhone app, costing $999.99, consisted simply of a glowing gem displayed on the screen. It was literally made for buyers to show off that they can blow a thousand dollars on nothing. The creator sold six before the app was pulled by Apple - mainly because some geniuses clicked on it to see whether it was real.
* The whole "bling" element of contemporary [[Hip Hop]] culture. Cultural critics (who cringe at the ostentation), black activists who 1) decry wasting money that could be used to benefit communities and 2) the whole [[Stop Being Stereotypical|"scandal before whitey" thing]]), and old-school rappers (who, besides agreeing with the activists, tend to regard "bling" as [[Completely Missing the Point]]) often disapprove, and [[Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment|let's just leave it at that]].
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Luxury Tropes]]
[[Category:Money Tropes]]
[[Category:Spectacle]]
[[Category:Truth in Television]]
[[Category:Alliterative Trope Titles]]
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