The Visa Diaries

Well, it turns out I have totally been made redundant! A recent article in the New York Times describes zebo.com, the newly launched “World’s biggest repository of what people own.” Zebo is a social networking site based entirely on people listing what they own and what they would like to own. Literally millions of people listing the contents of their closets and garages. Glad to know I was on to something when I started this project. Maybe I should close up shop and just start a profile on Zebo instead.

According to Roy de Souza, Zebo’s founder and chief executive,“’For the youth, you are what you own,’ he said. ‘They list these things because it defines them.’ Compare it to gleaning something about someone’s personality by reviewing their book or music collection.”

That makes sense – marketers have spent so much time and energy clearly defining the personalities of their products, that your average pair of jeans or piece of cookware these days says as much about what kind of person you are (or what kind of person you would like to be) as something more elaborated and personal, like a novel or album, used to say.

I wonder about this frenzy of self-definition through the shorthand of products. Do people feel more need to define ourselves these days than they did in the old days, or is it just that we have more products now with which to express it? If we are feeling more need now, is it maybe in reaction to all the images the media shows us of who we could or should be? Are products really a good way to define ourselves anyway, or if we really knew who we were, would we need to buy the latest iPod to telegraph it? Why does our self-definition need constant fortifying through new purchases?

The problem with Zebo is not that it’s about people’s things (I like things!). The problem is that it doesn’t ask anything about these objects we own and covet. If everybody on Zebo was using their lists to do that, then I definitely would close up shop and take notes!