The cultural impoverishment of consumerism

<p>You know how there’s a stereotype of people—usually urbane, knowledge-worker white guys—who make craft beer or whiskey or wine into their entire personality, and even though it’s obviously a pretty broad generalization, it still rings totally true to you and seems really familiar for reasons you can’t quite put your finger on? Me too. What’s the deal with that? </p><p>So glad you asked. Today, exclusively for paying Friends of Fingers, I’ve got an interview with <a target="_blank" href="http://twitter.com/jack_hamilton">Jack Hamilton</a> about conspicuous consumption, cultural commodification, and so much more. Jack is a bit of a polymath, and he wears a bunch of hats, though not in <a target="_blank" href="https://www.reddit.com/r/recruitinghell/comments/o1znf8/we_wear_many_hats_here/">the toxic start-uppy sense</a> of the term. He files regular dispatches as <a target="_blank" href="https://slate.com/author/jack-hamilton/2">Slate’s pop critic</a> and teaches as an associate professor of American Studies at the University of Virginia (<a target="_blank" href="https://www.si.com/college/2019/04/09/virginia-fans-wahoowa-texas-tech-national-championship-game">wahoowa</a>, et cetera.) He’s also the author of <em>Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination</em><em>. </em></p><p>This past spring, Jack went a little bit viral on Twitter with a post about <a target="_blank" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OA9gPtWDiww">a movie called </a><em>High Fidelity</em>, which came out in the year 2000. (It’s based on <a target="_blank" href="https://bookshop.org/a/14147/9781573225519">a 1995 novel by the same name</a> written by Nick Hornby.) Here’s what he posted:</p><p>As someone who loved both the book and movie versions of <em>High Fidelity</em>, and covers the rapidly shifting cultural landscape of American craft beer, I was intrigued. So I slid into Jack’s DMs and invited him on The Fingers Podcast.</p><p><em>🎁 This episode is exclusively for paying Friends of Fingers like you. Know a friend who