Gauravonomics Blog

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  Gaurav Mishra 8:47 pm on December 19, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: A&E TV, Consumed, Consumption (2), Hoarders, Rob Walker, Society (29)   

  A&E TV’s Reality Show Hoarders: We All Own Something That We Can’t Give Away 

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  For a recovering hoarder — I gave away everything I had accumulated over six years in one cathartic sweep last year — A&E TV’s hit new show ‘Hoarders‘ is a fascinating morality tale of how our possessions own us as much as we own them –

  Each 60-minute episode of Hoarders is a fascinating look inside the lives of two different people whose inability to part with their belongings is so out of control that they are on the verge of a personal crisis. Whether they’re facing eviction, the loss of their children, jail time, or divorce, they are all desperately in need of help. In a fly-on-the-wall style, we’ll capture the drama as experts work to put each on the road to recovery. But cleaning is just the first step, like taking drugs away from an addict. The healing won’t be easy. For some, throwing away even the tiniest thing — a sponge, a button, an empty box — is so painful that they will not be able to allow the cleaning to be completed, no matter the consequences. For others, professional help and an organizer’s guidance give them the strength to recover. At the end of each episode we’ll find out who has been able to keep their hoarding behavior at bay and who, despite help, is still lost inside this painful disease.

  Rob Walker adds in his NYT column ‘Consumed’ –

  Hoarding has been considered a subtype or a manifestation of obsessive-compulsive disorder, but recent research suggests that it is something distinct, according to Gail Steketee, dean of the school of social work at Boston University and co-author of a forthcoming book, “Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things.” While most hoarders have trouble controlling the urge to acquire, the more severe problems involve an irrational reluctance to let go, out of fear that they’ll throw out something they need or because of the memories a thing represents. “People who hoard are saving things for the same reasons that the rest of us are,” she says. Only more so.

  @hoardersTV on Twitter underlines the idea that the freaks on the reality show aren’t all that different from the rest of us –

  We all have something that is hard to give up. What object has sentimental value to you?

  What are you hoarding? Feel free to share your deepest darkest secrets in the comments below.

   

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  Gaurav Mishra 9:22 am on September 20, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Allison Mooney, Buying In, Cow, Default (576), Dirk Singer, PSFK (2), Rob Walker, Ryan Jones   

  The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption in News 

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  The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption had a busy week, thanks to my talk at Interesting NY.

  First, Rob Walker, the author of Buying In, mentioned me in his shout-out for Interesting NY –

  The one (speaker at Interesting NY) that caught my attention is The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption. That would be Gaurav Mishra, who writes: “On March 23, I decided to go off consumption for a year to understand an increasingly important subculture whose members refuse to define their identity by buying things.” Here is Mishra’s blog — which turns out to be a book in progress. I was a little surprised to see the top post is about “How to market to consumers who define themselves by their anti-consumerism.”

  So I suppose he’s the marketer who went off consumption … in order to become a better marketer? I’m not sure how I feel about that.

  But … there’s some other interesting stuff in the blog, which I’ll have to examine more closely a little later, and if you live in New York and want to pay $35 to hear from him and the other presenters at this event, I’d be curious to hear what you think.

  Then, Dirk Singer, the co-founder of Cow, also wrote about my experiment –

  In recent months, we’ve posted a few entries about people who’ve decided to opt out either from the consumerism or information bombardment of the outside world.

  Now from Mumbai comes a year long experiment where a marketer has gone ‘off consumption.’ As he explains in Time Out Mumbai, on 23 March Gaurav Mishra decided to stop buying anything that wasn’t a life necessity. So food and basics only.

  Realising that this wasn’t enough, he then decided to shed his “self constructed identity” in July and gave away everything he owned to five strangers. “When I say everything, I do mean everything – furniture, electronics items, books, DVDs – all the accumulated acquisitions of an intellectual yuppie.”

  Gaurav Mishra’s blog, which will form the basis of a book at the end of the experiment, can be followed here.

  Ryan Jones, who writes about the intersection of marketing and purpose, asked if consumption is overrated (yes!) –

  Just how overrated is consumption?

  Gaurav Mishra is trying to answer some pretty heavy questions about the nature of consumption in his blog to book experiment, The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption.

  As global warming breathes down our collective necks and we enter “the age of responsibility” we should all probably question our consumption habits. Do we really need all this things? Why does XMAS now just have to be about the gifts? What if we all really made a commitment to just live a bit simpler & unclutter our lives?

  Gaurav believes that “owning, buying, hoarding” is shifting into a experience, share/exchange/giving mindset.

  At times in my life I have lived pretty lean. During my days at West Point, I basically survived with a radio, computer & a bed. Once you live like this for a few years, you realize that you really don’t need much. My wife sometimes jokes that I could probably live like a monk and not have a problem…though we live relatively lean in Europe right now, we could certainly still clear out about half of our stuff and be just fine.

  I am interested in hearing more from this “Amish marketer:” Keep going Gaurav…

  Finally, Allison Mooney got in touch with me for a profile on PSFK –

  Gaurav Mishra has given himself a paradoxical moniker “the marketer who went off consumption.” He’s earned it: the young, upwardly-mobile marketing executive became a hardcore ascetic over the past year (no eating out, no going out for movies or music or plays, no television or newspapers, no shopping except for necessities). The now-Georgetown Fellow is keeping a “year-long book-as-a-blog experiment in why we choose to consume, or not,” which he spoke about at Interesting NYC.

  His presentation left us with questions: No music? No SHOPPING?? What was it that caused such a drastic life change (besides a potential book deal)? Torn between confusion and admiration, we asked him, as part of our continuing series, “What’s Your Inspiration?”

  Follow Gaurav Mishra’s journey at The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption.

  Thank you, everybody, for your support.

  Dirk Singer is discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    Dirk Singer 11:05 am on September 21, 2008 Permalink | Reply

    Thanks for the link back! An interesting experiment and you’ve certainly taken this further than most who go down this road.