Binging Hell of Presidents, Matt (the largest of the chapos, who should be able to eat the smaller ones) said something that resonated with me- the idea that our connection with class is so disassociated and immaterial that the only way we can express ourselves is through consumption.
I realised he was 100% right, but sadly realised I couldn't figure out alternatives. Is there any answer apart from getting off our damn iphone? (it's community connection right? But we still have to consume food and culture to do so...- or am I taking it too literally?)
It's not about consumption strictly limited to the food/shopping sense, but also in the media we consume: think of how we bond over this or that TV show, what we binged on Netflix, the "communities" we build around this or that streamer, YouTuber or popular subscription-based succdem podcast :thinkin-lenin:
Now compare that to our relationships based on anything else that happens in the real world - our place of work, our communities, family. Even hobbies can be consumption-based because they may entail a barrier to entry that is dependent on buying certain products and that in turn recontextualises belonging to that community based on the terms of the capitalists offering that point of entry.
I don't have any useful answers to that problem; I'm as atomized as anybody else is.