"A consumer is a shopper who is sore about something"
About this Quote
“Consumer” sounds like a neutral economic category, a tidy little noun for someone who buys things. Coffin punctures that cleanliness by swapping in “shopper” (a person with agency, choice, wandering attention) and then adding the emotional bruise: “sore about something.” It’s a mean, funny twist because it implies the word consumer isn’t descriptive; it’s defensive. You don’t become a consumer when you’re delighted. You become one when you feel wronged and need a role that legitimizes your grievance.
The intent is to mock the self-importance baked into consumer identity. A shopper is ordinary; a consumer is a claimant. The subtext is that modern marketplace language doesn’t just track behavior, it manufactures a posture: aggrieved, entitled, ready to appeal to rights, refunds, and “I’d like to speak to someone.” Coffin catches how commerce turns irritation into a kind of civic stance. In that sense, “consumer” is less a participant in the economy than a litigant-in-waiting.
Contextually, the joke lands in an era when “consumer” rose as a powerful public category - consumer protection, consumer advocacy, consumer reports - and when advertising increasingly promised not just products but satisfaction, status, and selfhood. If the world sells you a better life, any mismatch becomes an injury. Coffin’s line works because it exposes the emotional engine behind a supposedly rational system: markets run on desire, but consumer culture runs on disappointment, then repackages that disappointment as identity.
The intent is to mock the self-importance baked into consumer identity. A shopper is ordinary; a consumer is a claimant. The subtext is that modern marketplace language doesn’t just track behavior, it manufactures a posture: aggrieved, entitled, ready to appeal to rights, refunds, and “I’d like to speak to someone.” Coffin catches how commerce turns irritation into a kind of civic stance. In that sense, “consumer” is less a participant in the economy than a litigant-in-waiting.
Contextually, the joke lands in an era when “consumer” rose as a powerful public category - consumer protection, consumer advocacy, consumer reports - and when advertising increasingly promised not just products but satisfaction, status, and selfhood. If the world sells you a better life, any mismatch becomes an injury. Coffin’s line works because it exposes the emotional engine behind a supposedly rational system: markets run on desire, but consumer culture runs on disappointment, then repackages that disappointment as identity.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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