Use Value as a Cultural Strategy against Over-Commodification: A Durkheimian Analysis of Craft Consumption within Virtual Communities

Introduction

Consumption research has repeatedly cast doubt upon the Critical Theory/Mass Culture (CTMC) understanding of mass consumption. Miller (1987: 167) argues that CTMC’s shortcomings stem from developing its concept of the mystified consumer within a theoretical critique of capitalism rather than an empirical analysis of actors’ consumption. Empirical research has indeed revealed various holes in CTMC, yet it has often overplayed the individual’s agency, individualism, and consumptive freedom (Warde, 1994, 2016). Furthermore, seeking distance from CTMC understandings, most studies have overlooked emic conceptions of the duped consumer. My research explores such emic understandings within musical virtual communities and studies how these communities affect individuals’ consumption. While previous research has studied the ways in which virtual communities influence consumption (Kozinets, 1999; Scaraboto et al., 2012), it has tended to reduce ‘group life’ to sets of inter-personal relations that influence individual product choices (‘X’ over ‘Y’). Furthermore, researchers have developed their understanding of consumptive norms and ‘moral standards’ using members’ reactions to specific products and marketing campaigns (Kozinets, 1999; Kozinets and Handelman, 1998), rather than analysing these norms and standards as a regulatory force that frames and governs members’ broader consumptive lives. Subsequently, an understanding of marketing ‘do’s and don’ts’ displaces an investigation of how consumptive norms are enforced, employed, and maintained, within groups’ daily interactions.

My research shifts away from marketing concerns to understand how social facts (ways of acting, thinking, or feeling which exist outside the individual and exert coercive force; Durkheim, 1965) regulate consumption within virtual communities. These social facts are evidenced by the creation of group images, discussions, and evaluative standards that critically invoke ‘use value’ as a cultural value against over-commodification and mass consumption. Through their online interactions actors learn to ‘use use value’ to curb their consumption and distinguish mass consumption from the types of creative, productive, and engaged consumptive acts Campbell (2005) calls ‘craft consumption’. Thus, web groups put in place the ‘conditions of possibility’ for actors to regulate and ‘order’ their consumptive lives. In this sense, use value is a form of ‘discipline’ (Durkheim, 2011) that is enacted and practised by actors within a particular milieu. ¹ Yet as we will see, the virtual community is not solely a regulatory force (see Warde, 1994) for the group’s prolonged and impassioned commodity discussions can also create anomic desire and weaken the categorical distinction between mass and craft consumption.

Campbell (2005: 37) deems craft consumption a precarious practice since the consumption of mass commodities can reinforce the mass commodification craft consumers seek to address. Actors must therefore abate this inadvertent risk by somehow counter-acting and balancing over-commodification (Kopytoff, 1986). Combining Kopytoff’s notion of balance with Durkheim’s understanding of social facts, my research illustrates how virtual communities use farce, ridicule, and collective values to maintain the distinction between mass and craft consumption and reclaim (rather than reject) commodification. The article concludes that despite the strength of Campbell’s (2005) concept of the craft consumer, his individualistic and psychological account of consumption (Campbell, 2004) cannot fully make sense of the collective phenomenon witnessed within the virtual communities studied here. Be it a disciplined restraint or a frenzied lust, consumptive practices must be rooted in a collective reality.

Methodology

My research stems from the study of two virtual communities: The Gear Page (TGP) and The Canadian Guitar Forum (TCGF). ² I selected these two communities based upon their longevity, size, and consistent activity. Most of the reported findings come from TGP since it is much larger and generates greater activity; the smaller TCGF was therefore mainly used as a way to support/verify the basic trends I was finding on TGP. Since my research interests are divided between the collective nature of virtual communities and guitar players’ consumptive practices, an online method offered the best chance of answering my specific research questions (see Ignacio, 2012: 241). Virtual communities are also an ideal area to study consumption because, unlike other types of virtual groups (chat rooms, blogs, social networks, etc.), virtual communities are often dedicated to consumption (Kozinets, 1999: 253). They have also been previously used to study craft consumers (Arsel and Bean, 2013; Orton-Johnson, 2014) and are well known to influence commodity consumption (Denegri-Knott and Molesworth, 2010; Kozinets, 1999; Scaraboto et al., 2012; Watson and Shove, 2008).

My preliminary research involved an extended period of observation where I anonymously read group threads without posting or responding. Such observation allowed me to understand the group, collect basic information, and draft preliminary research questions before becoming a contributing member. While such ‘lurking’ is somewhat controversial, it is widely practised and is often recognized as a necessary part of online research (Hookway, 2008). Lurking is also the way in which most members initially come to know a virtual community (Kozinets, 1999), and it therefore draws an important symmetry between the researcher’s and layperson’s experience (see Garcia et al., 2009). Once I switched from observation to participant observation, I immediately faced a problem common to all field researchers: establishing ‘credibility’ and gaining acceptance. This process sometimes required me to actively enter group debates and even challenge members’ claims. Therefore I shed the traditional role of the ‘neutral’ ethnographer in favour of what Walstrom (2004) calls a ‘participant experiencer’. While this approach may hinder ‘reliability’, ³ it fostered group acceptance and significantly increased the research’s validity; in fact, Garcia et al. (2009: 60) recommend that whenever possible, researchers should ‘experience the online site the same way that actual participants routinely experience it’. Nonetheless, I intentionally limited my participation to avoid ‘guiding the conversations toward a conversation that the respondents may not have intended to participate’ (Ignacio, 2012: 242). Therefore, I did not originate threads around specific research questions or topics nor did I actively ‘probe’ members for their thoughts on particular subjects or themes relevant to my own interests.

At least two potential problems and limitations emerge in the type of online research conducted here. The first problem involves how well the selected online community represents online craft consumers as a whole (see Ignacio, 2012: 240). While one must exercise caution in extending the article’s findings to other online virtual communities, Watson and Shove (2008) and Orton-Johnson’s (2014) studies illustrate a similar constellation of online commodity discussions, use value, and offline production, among DIY and knitting craft consumers. Yet since these studies were not specifically interested in how online groups regulate and/or foster consumption, the parallels to my own research are limited and general. While more research is needed, there is no reason to assume that the types of ‘social facts’ illustrated within this article could not/do not exist in other virtual craft consumption communities. Nonetheless, caution is warranted and my conclusions must remain tentative.

The second potential problem in my study involves how accurately online statements represent offline reality. Hookway (2008: 97) notes that people can easily misrepresent their identities and practices online and it is therefore problematic to take online representations at face value. Yet such blatant misrepresentation seems more likely to occur within particular types of communities. As Armstrong and Hagel (2000) note, ‘Communities of Fantasy’ inherently lead members to adopt new identities and engage in online theatre and play; ‘Communities of Interest’, like the ones analysed here, do not foster these practices by their very nature. For this reason, the strong symmetry Hartmann (2016) and Orton-Johnson (2014) found between on and offline craft consumption should not come as a surprise. Yet there is an entirely different way my research contains the problem of representation. In seeking to also understand how virtual communities ‘produce particular effects’, the problem of representation is somewhat bracketed for the ‘representational truth’ of members’ statements is no longer at stake (Hookway, 2008: 97). Even if one were to discover that the members’ online claims were purposefully distorted and non-representational, Hookway believes this fabrication would nonetheless tell us something important about cultural ideas and society’s organization. Thus, although my research cannot specify how closely members’ online claims reflect their actual consumption habits, their collective concern and anxiety about commodification and consumption is informative and fascinating in and of itself. The groups’ images, videos, and long posts invoking ‘use value’ as a means to consumptive balance, offer a rich academic resource for understanding the meaning of commodification and consumption in contemporary society.

Before examining my research, a brief concluding word on ethics and online research is warranted. Hookway (2008) notes that a solid consensus about the ethics of online research has yet to appear. Of particular importance is the public or private nature of online writing/data and if informed consent is needed to use such materials within academic research (2008: 105). Hookway (2008: 105) argues for a ‘fair game-public domain’ position since anyone writing on an openly accessible online platform knows he/she is engaging in ‘a public act of writing’. He maintains this position even though his research focuses on blogs which are typically more personal and individual than large, public, and open virtual communities (Kozinets, 1999; Scaraboto et al., 2012). Furthermore, not all virtual communities offer the same likelihood of encountering ethical issues. Whereas a ‘Community of Relationship’ is based upon assumed anonymity and intense personal experiences (e.g. rape or cancer), a ‘Community of Interest’, such as those analysed within my own work, are not as intimate or personal (Armstrong and Hagel, 2000). For all the reasons cited above, a university ethics board confidently approved my research since it was unlikely to harm group members, made no effort to reveal offline identities, and utilized posts and threads that were freely constructed within a public forum offering no expectation of privacy.

Craft vs Mass Consumption

Critical Theory and Mass Culture (CTMC) conceptions of consumption too often cast consumption as a monolithic extension of capitalist production (Campbell, 2005; Miller, 1987; Warde, 2016). Accordingly, consumers seem ‘duped’, ‘mystified’, or alienated by the very consumption of mass produced commodities. Yet Campbell (2005: 24–26) believes mass produced commodities can also facilitate knowledgeable, productive, and creative ‘acts of self-expression’. Such acts of consumption evade CTMC’s characterization of the modern consumer (Campbell, 2005: 27). For example, Yarwood and Shaw’s (2010) study of model train enthusiasts and Zevnik’s (2012) study of home ‘chefs’ show that craft consumers possess such an extensive list of knowledge, know-how, and skill that it is impossible to deem their commodity consumption passive, mindless, or alienating.

While an active sense of engaged ‘production’ plays a large role in differentiating craft and mass consumption, craft consumption differs from ‘co-creation’ or ‘prosumption’ because actors do not participate in the production of mass produced commodities. Instead, the craft consumer typically amasses something ‘new’ from mass produced commodities: ‘[Craft consumption] does not normally involve the physical “creation” of a product. Rather, what is actually created is an “ensemble” or a “putting together” of products, each of which may itself be a standardized or mass-produced item’ (Campbell, 2005: 34). Campbell’s examples of ‘ensembles’ include collections, ⁴ wardrobes, and the host of tools and gadgets one assembles through their pursuit of cooking activities or DIY. In my study, the guitar player’s ‘rig’ perfectly exemplifies a craft ensemble since players invest a great deal of time and energy in ‘putting together’ specific guitars, effects pedals, and amplifiers, etc. to achieve a signature sound. Hartmann (2016: 12) notes that producing music requires guitar players to put together the ‘right’ combination of equipment in the same way craftspersons must procure ‘the right’ raw materials for the job at hand. Since online commodity discussions play a large role in informing one’s gear choices, they are an inherent part of music production and, by extension, a commodity’s use value (Hartmann, 2016: 14–15). Thus, we should not dismiss online commodity discussions as mere ‘idle fetishized chatter’. Nor should we see them as ‘nothing new’, for although musicians have always ‘talked gear’, virtual communities facilitate both a quantitative and qualitative change in these discussions. First, many more musicians can participate and therefore the number of shared consumptive experiences and insights has grown exponentially; the isolated rural hobbyist or the star of ‘Madison Square bedroom’ can easily develop their selective skills, judgement, and expertise via the virtual community. This quantitative change is matched by a qualitative change, for commodity discussions are now a truly group phenomenon rather than a series of face-to-face conversations. This shift is important for as Durkheim (1965) has shown, group life is a sui generis reality over and above the individuals who comprise it. As we will see, this reality must be understood as comprising one’s consumptive practices.

Just as use value imbues commodity discussion it also informs players’ consumptive identities. People not only identify themselves through their rigs, for the ensemble helps establish one’s signature sound, ⁵ but they also assume different identities vis-a-vis musical commodities. For example, both my own and Hartmann’s (2016) study found that guitar players often divide themselves into two basic groups. ‘Purists’ claim that optimal tone, the elusive timbre players desire, is ‘in the hands’ rather than in the gear. ⁶ Conversely, ‘Gear slutz’ ⁷ (or ‘gear heads’ in Hartmann’s study) believe ‘tone’ is gear-dependent and therefore accumulate as much gear as possible to produce the tone they ‘hear in their heads’. While it may seem that purists are largely disinterested in gear, they must seek the right gear to let ‘their hands’ shine through and therefore both statuses engage in the frenzied commodity discussions that comprises the web group itself.

Although actors take on different identities vis-a-vis consumption, these identities are not ‘branded’ (Campbell, 2004: 32). Rather than adopting a commodity’s sign value, the consumer’s identity, like guitar rigs themselves, consists of a unique ensemble of commodified parts. For Campbell (2004: 30–31), our ‘self’ emerges from the configuration of tastes and wants that congeal as the sum total of our consumptive experiences. ⁸ Consumptive identities are therefore somewhat unitary and stable since they are slowly established through years of consumptive experience rather than quickly contrived through a never ending mix of signs. This stress on accumulated experience explains why consumptive identities are stable yet not static, for actors continually explore new consumptive experiences to augment their existing identity. Campbell (2004: 38, emphases added) locates the source of this ongoing ‘longing for commodities’ within individual psychology:

[Contemporary consumption] is built upon the ability of individuals to perform a particular psychological ‘trick’, that of producing desire where none previously existed […] In effect [consumers] have to ‘conjure up’ a specific positive feeling for an object or experience out of thin air […] It is thus not entirely fanciful to suggest that consumers do indeed create their own reality. That is to say they are themselves responsible for creating the necessary conditions for their consumption experiences.

This ‘conjured reality’ comes to fruition as consumption progressively supplants group and institutional affiliations as the primary source of one’s personal identity (2004: 28–32); with the socio-historic weakening of groups vis-a-vis the individual, Campbell (2004: 28) believes consumptive freedom emboldens an ‘unrestrained or unrestricted individualism’ in which ‘no one but you is in a position to decide what it is that you want’. Yet such claims downplay the social influences on ‘want’ (peer pressure, advertising, etc.) and ignore consumption’s continuing role in social integration and regulation. Rather than an atomistic individualism, we need a framework that allows us to understand how groups both foster and regulate the individual’s consumptive desire and create ‘the necessary conditions for consumptive experiences’. This does not necessitate a reductive analysis that explains individual consumption through a determinate set of traditional group associations (homo sociologicus) (see Miller, 1987; Warde, 1994, 2016), but merely requires an approach that illuminates a distinct social reality, over and above the individual, that continues to shape contemporary consumption.

Using Durkheim’s understanding of integrative and regulatory social facts, Warde (1994: 883–887) argues that consumptive norms continue to integrate and regulate individuals: ‘new groups with disciplined purchasing habits are emerging, smaller than classes or churches, but nevertheless observing highly regulated patterns of appropriate consumption’ (1994: 887, emphases added). Writing in 1994, Warde was incapable of studying how craft consumption virtual communities influence actors’ consumption. Yet as we will see, virtual communities must balance the actor’s engaged interest in commodities against a wider homogenized world of commodification. This balance, and the very distinction between craft and mass consumption, requires a form of regulation and discipline. The study of balance, conceptual distinction, and regulation, leads us to examine Kopytoff’s understanding of commodification and Durkheim’s understanding of social order.

Kopytoff and Durkheim: Balance, Order, and the Problem of Over-Commodification

The CTMC critique of consumption tends to equate commodification with capitalism itself. Yet Kopytoff notes that commodification precedes capitalism and has existed in every society and economy. Our goal, therefore, is to understand how capitalism changes/impacts commodification rather than suggest how to overcome and transcend commodification in toto (Kopytoff, 1986: 72, 79). In massively exceeding any previous society’s level of commodification, capitalism fosters socio-cultural homogenization because too many objects become commodified. In response to this ‘over-commodification’, groups create cultural understandings, rules, and practices to balance and ‘order’ the non-commodified (un-exchangeable, singular, and unique objects) vis-a-vis the commodified (common, exchangeable, objects) (Kopytoff, 1986: 69–70). Campbell (2005: 37) believes craft consumption is just such a practice since it re-establishes singularity and personalized self-expression within ‘an ever-widening “desert” of commodification and marketization’. For example, guitar rigs create a unique and personalized sound/tone by ‘putting commodities together’. Thus, in shifting from a transcending critique to an understanding of balance and order, the appropriate theoretical model for understanding craft consumption and virtual communities moves from CTMC towards Durkheim.

Durkheim’s understanding of social balance and harmony remains a classic in sociology. In arguing that every social order is a moral order, Durkheim plays off the two meanings of order: to organize and command. Thus, an ‘orderly’ social system (balanced and functional) requires and presupposes a set of normative prescriptions. While we can analytically divide the structural from the normative, the two are co-determinate since norms both arise from and make possible social interaction. In fact, Durkheim (1984: xlii–xliii, emphasis added) believes groups spontaneously create norms through frequent interaction:

as soon as a certain number of individuals find they hold in common ideas, interests, sentiments and occupations which the rest of the population does not share in, it is inevitable that, under the influence of these similarities, they should be attracted to one another. They will seek one another out, enter into relationships and associate together. Thus a restricted group is gradually formed within society as a whole with its own special features. Once such a group is formed, a moral life evolves within it which naturally bears the distinguishing mark of the special conditions in which it has developed.

If we take occupation in the more general sense of ‘something that occupies us’, craft consumption virtual communities share many similarities with the occupational groups (‘corporations’) Durkheim alludes to above. Like craft consumption web groups, many corporations originate in craft production (craft guilds), have roots in the arts and artisanship, and have blended educational, artistic, and recreational activities in a way that ‘balances’ the economic forces of wider social life (Durkheim, 1984: liii). In fact, Durkheim believes modern ‘corporations’ can act as a moral force to counteract anomie, help regulate and control economic production, and foster social order by balancing the excesses of capitalist commodity production. This balance and moral order is achieved and maintained through collective representations, frequent interactions, and the shared knowledge and interests that defines the corporate group. Since craft consumption virtual communities are also based upon shared interests and knowledge, are differentiated from other groups (craft vs mass), and involve frequent (even daily) interactions, ⁹ they would also seem capable of spontaneously generating a moral order in the same way as corporations. This moral order should similarly counteract anomie and create balance and order by regulating excessive consumptive desires and wants.

Durkheim’s work allows us to see consumptive wants and desires as social phenomena without implying actors are ‘tricked or duped’ into wanting things they ‘really’ do not want or need. Instead of ascertaining the authenticity of one’s needs or wants, we must therefore examine how the group’s specific form of self-regulatory discipline ¹⁰ and collective representations form a moral order that regulates individuals’ wants and desires. Yet since virtual communities’ web groups are created to facilitate consumption, are made possible by an increasingly commercialized internet, and are also shaped by wider social forces that are unique to developed capitalism (consumerism and neoliberalism), they also hold the potential to foster an anomic, insatiable, and uncontrolled, form of consumption and commodity desire; for these reasons, consumption can potentially take on its secondary meaning of a ‘pathology’. Virtual communities, therefore, allow us to examine if groups can create a sense of order and balance amid a wider social setting of deregulation and anomie. In a world of increasing commodification and homogenization, is there any evidence that virtual communities attempt to create balance via a moral order?

Online Anomie: Useless Consumption and Uncontrolled Want

As we have seen, online discussions are part and parcel of producing music and sound. As such, online commodity discussions inform the creation of guitar rigs (ensembles) and embody the sense of productive use that Campbell believes distinguishes craft from mass consumption. However, online discussions can also spin ‘out of control’ and threaten this craft/mass distinction. For example, many group members ‘admit’ that they barely use new products before putting them back in their boxes, selling them on the used market, and quickly buying something else. Such behaviour, known as ‘flipping’, explains why the ‘The Gear Page’s’ (TGP) 154 (and counting) page thread, ‘What do you have in the mail?’, simply lists the products that are currently being delivered to members’ homes (see Figure 1). Furthermore, questions such as ‘what is the best “x”?’ almost invariably foster discussions about the commodities themselves (their options, features, availability, speculation about upcoming products) rather than the user’s specific needs or the product’s usefulness for producing music; members attempt to define ‘best’ outside any context of use as if this quality somehow inheres within the commodity itself. Similarly, members will also post step-by-step ‘photo essays’ or videos which document a new product being removed from its cardboard shipping box and unwrapped from its factory packaging; ¹¹ threads entitled ‘NPD, NGD, NAD’ (New Pedal Day, New Amp Day, New Guitar Day) announce new product purchases to the congratulatory praise of others. Finally, members also seem to hold a fetishized view of commodities for text-only posts often elicit the response seen in Figure 2. This concern with appearance and display also explains why members post photographs of their gear using advertising aesthetics, elaborate backdrops, and high resolution cameras.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

What’s in the mail?

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 2.

A useless understanding of ‘value’.

In the groups I studied, commodity discussion reaches such frenzied heights that members claim they are suffering from ‘GAS’: Gear Acquisition Syndrome. Posters often claim they are ‘GASing’ for a new product in the same way a drug addict desires a hit, and GAS is described as a sickness or addiction that cannot be stopped (see Figure 3). Thus, posters who claim they have stopped buying gear are often mocked with a knowing, ‘sure you won’t’, since many who have sworn off new purchases soon erupt in unbridled acts of consumption. Many respondents blame GAS on internet ‘hype’ and the groups’ ceaseless commodity discussion and display. Thus, although members find their ‘tone quests’ pleasurable, endless commodity discussion and product announcements (often labelled as Public Service Announcements) can also lead members to feel consumptive exhaustion and fatigue. Clearly, web groups are rife with commodities, consumptive desire, and exchange value (flipping, selling, marketing, etc.). In this way such online activities seem to extend, rather than reclaim, commodification. Given marketers use of online stealth marketing (Dobele et al., 2005; Kaikati and Kaikati, 2004), such groups seem even less likely to balance commodification. Yet before deeming these groups GAS inducing bastions of false needs and fetishized perceptions (Marcuse, 1991), it is important to examine how groups can also help limit and curtail members’ consumption.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 3.

GASoholics Anonymous.

‘Using Use Value’: Use Value as a Strategy to fight GAS

When group discussions and consumptive practices become ‘unbalanced’ and over-commodified it leads to a type of pathology that ‘Johnny Moondog’ illustrates below:

[Post 1] I have more than enough pedals to do whatever I want to do.

I have variations on all types of sounds/combinations.

I have old, I have new – I have cheap, I have boutique.

Whenever I think I am satisfied – another shiny box is produced, and I want to try it.

I have so many options – it’s kind of overwhelming.

Amps and guitars and pedals and combinations….

I have reached tone chasing fatigue.

Somewhat amazingly, GAS has led some members to ask ‘TGP’s’ moderator to ‘suspend, ban or delete their account because they are spending too much time here […] it happens every few months, and it’s striking every time it does’. ¹² Yet such drastic requests pale in number to a much more common strategy for assessing and curtailing one’s consumption: producing music. The responses to Johnny Moondog’s above post, for example, almost unanimously suggested that playing music (using gear) is the solution to Johnny’s problems. ‘Splatt’s’ response is especially interesting (bold and italic in original):

that’s great, dude!

consuming can be fun, and socially enjoyable, and can def be constructive (with music as the forefront & as the perspective);

but, obsessive consuming is not the point.

obsessive consuming should not get in the way of making music;

making music:

playing, practising, gigging, studying, improving & developing, thinking & conceptualising, writing & (most of all) all of the lovely, wonderful, scary & horrible real-life stuff that makes making-music actually & really meaningful.

‘Splatt’s’ post shows how actors attempt to reclaim rather than transcend commodification. Interest in commodities is fine as long as buying and selling gear does not supplant playing music as one’s main activity and concern. If the rig is not used for producing music and if each commodity is completely substitutable as a sign, ¹³ the rig is seen as over-commodified since the equipment’s use value becomes secondary to its sign or exchange value. This explains why despite their differences, ‘purists’ and ‘gear slutz’ both frequently disparage ‘lawyers’ and ‘old guys in tan pants’ for keeping guitars ‘behind glass’ (on display in glass cases). The farcical pedals seen in Figure 4 similarly react against members who are ‘too interested’ in commodities and elevate commodities above the ‘creative acts of self expression’ (Campbell, 2005: 24–26) they enable. The pedals echo the phrase ‘less eBay, more Mel Bay’ ¹⁴ in reminding members that ability and skill remain in the non-commodified realm; if they could be purchased on the market, everyone would possess talent or play like Stevie Ray Vaughan. Tellingly, however, these pedals illustrate problematic forms of consumption using the mass produced commodities (guitar pedals) that craft consumers nonetheless use to build their ‘rigs’ and establish their unique sound. This clearly shows that group members reclaim commodities by establishing order (both a moral order of normative consumptive prescriptions and a social order of distinct groupings consisting of mass and craft consumers) rather than trying to transcend commodification altogether. This mixture of consumptive critique and differentiation amid commodity discussion and desire illustrates that within the culture of virtual communities critique is reserved for over-commodification rather than commodification itself.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 4.

Regulating over-commodification.

Online Klontroversy: Reflexive Production

Thus far we have examined how group members ‘use use value’ to reclaim commodities and counter over-commodification. But can those who produce these commodities also counter over-commodification through their production? The ‘Klon’ overdrive pedal has long sparked debate within online communities and is one of the most ‘hyped’ and ‘GAS inducing’ products ever discussed within musical web groups. Originally selling for nearly US$300, Bill Finnegan hand built each pedal one at a time. Like any other relatively expensive commodity, the pedal had its supporters (it is like nothing else and worth the money) and its detractors (it is a rip off and many $40 pedals do exactly the same thing). Given the price and limited availability, supporters claimed detractors were just jealous and denying what they could not have, while others claimed owners were ‘hearing with their eyes’ and were simply trying to justify their foolish expenditures. Such debates surround many ‘upscale’ products, yet Klon threads were particularly vehement and would continue for hundreds of pages before ultimately reaching the thread page limit (only to re-emerge in a new thread). The debate only intensified as slow production and a long list of back orders created a market in which used pedals sold for much more than the price of new units. Finnegan therefore stopped producing pedals in hopes of redesigning the pedal for quicker production. During this down time, used prices skyrocketed even higher and the lore of the Klon grew by the day. This scenario seems to perfectly exemplify Comor’s (2010: 319) claim that increasing exchange value makes use value ‘fantastic’. Yet rather than cashing in by raising the retail price, Finnegan responded to the Klon’s increasing hyperbole by radically changing the pedal’s graphics in hopes of balancing the growing online rhetoric and ‘fetishization’ of his own product (see Figure 5). The newly designed Klon pedal therefore features the text, ‘Kindly remember: the ridiculous hype that offends so many is not of my making. Almost always better. Almost always worse.’

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 5.

A Klontroversial message.

The online community’s response ranged from hardy laughs of appreciation, outright shock and indignation, to a refusal to believe the pictures were real (many members initially believed the pictures of the redesigned pedal were Photoshopped ‘mock ups’ similar to those in Figure 5). ‘Vanguard’s’ response to the new graphics, however, perfectly captures the collective response to over-commodification illustrated throughout this article:

if that’s really it, I’m interested in buying one for the first time.

what an amazing ‘F you’ to the people who turned the klon into a mythical, biblical, simultaneously sacrosanct and sanctimonious product.

the klon is forgotten as an actual guitar pedal and becomes an item of obsession and endless emotional politics.

bill has the cajones to let the pedal be what it is at this point: a topic of debate first – a pedal second. it’s like the very physical product is a TGP [The Gear Page] post, nothing more or less – brilliant and so, so punk rock.

lastly, the ‘almost always better, almost always worse’ on the side is equally hilarious and damning of TGP and i find it brave and hilarious.

this most certainly isn’t real, but oh if it were. […] give the masses their mythical centaur [as was pictured on the original pedal], but not before you fix a guilded penis to its forehead.

While Finnegan’s redesigned pedal can hardly balance over-commodification and anomic desire in and of itself, it cautions against simply dismissing the online world as completely commodified and fetishized. ¹⁵ Despite the almost incessant gear discussion on TGP, attempts to balance and reclaim commodification spontaneously emerge as the group interacts.

Conclusion

Rather than fostering a non-commodified alternative to capitalism, craft consumption addresses over-commodification by ‘using use value’ to balance a homogenizing wash of commodified exchange and sign value. Rigs that are not created for their ‘use’ are perceived as ‘overly-commodified’ and a collective response seeks to balance this commodification through farce, ridicule, and the restatement of collective values. Thus, although virtual communities may foster GAS (anomic consumption) they also establish the collective norms and values that can lead individuals to change their commodity consumption. In this way, craft consumption virtual communities put in place the conditions of possibility for wider social change in a way Campbell’s (2004) individualistic and psychological understanding of consumption cannot address. This potential for change leads to a much larger and interesting theoretical question: can a practice that initially reproduces wider social relations and structures (via the consumption of mass produced commodities) but nonetheless informs changes in consciousness and practice (via the establishment of group norms and values within virtual communities), eventually go on to transform the problematic aspects of the structures and relations it initially reproduced? Durkheim’s (1984) work suggests that ‘corporations’ can do exactly this by ending economic anomie without destroying capitalism as a whole; the wholesale economic change CTMC sees as a precondition for overcoming problematic forms of consumption may not be required. Nonetheless, Campbell (2005: 36–37) notes that craft consumption’s attempt to reclaim commodities by ‘embracing them’ can inadvertently increase the problems linked to commodification (GAS). Due to this precariousness, the reproductive or transformative potential of craft consumption and virtual communities cannot be theoretically deduced in advance and demands careful empirical elucidation. The study presented here is but one attempt to empirically demonstrate an example of this transformative potential.