FIRE bloggers fizzling

[Metalcat]

For anyone wondering what the young kids are calling it these days, it's "under consumption core" on TikTok where people post videos about how they reduce their spending.

https://theconversation.com/understanding-underconsumption-core-how-a-new-trend-is-challenging-consumer-culture-235417

[tj]

For anyone wondering what the young kids are calling it these days, it's "under consumption core" on TikTok where people post videos about how they reduce their spending.

https://theconversation.com/understanding-underconsumption-core-how-a-new-trend-is-challenging-consumer-culture-235417

Why do we have to rebrand established terms. 😂

[erp]

Why do we have to rebrand established terms. 😂

Ooo! I know this one - https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2024/06/social-media-american-slang-crisis/678754/

The thesis of the article is that an important part of language is to signal your identity to your in-group. The ubiquity of internet communication makes it incredibly difficult to know if someone's actually part of your group, or just happens to have picked up the language of your group without actually becoming fluent in your group's norms and culture. So once upon a time, this community used terms like 'face-punch' and if you happened to have a co-worker talk about face-punches in a spending context, it was a good bet they'd also know something about ETFs (because they'd be hanging around these forums).

On the other hand, if someone's talking about rizz (a term I only know because of the NYT mini) - that's not a good marker of their cultural context because they might have picked it up on tiktok.

Essentially, we need to rebrand established terms for one of two reasons:
1) Because the value of the term as a way to signal that we're part of the group has degraded (ie. FIRE's not cool anymore, let's talk about consumption-core); or
2) Because we want to add slight nuance to a term that only matters to someone who's already fluent in the concepts (ie. FIRE splitting into fat-FIRE/coast-FIRE/SWAMI)

[Metalcat]

For anyone wondering what the young kids are calling it these days, it's "under consumption core" on TikTok where people post videos about how they reduce their spending.

https://theconversation.com/understanding-underconsumption-core-how-a-new-trend-is-challenging-consumer-culture-235417

Why do we have to rebrand established terms. 😂

Because they are too young to have ever read anything by MMM or other FIRE bloggers. They're developing their own culture around reduced spending, largely driven by environmentalism and cynicism, and it's more of a product of push back against the established history of most influencers being flagrantly consumerist, and essentially just walking product placements.

There are influencers now whose entire brand is pushing back against messaging that you should be buying expensive, unnecessary products.

So it's not a co-opting of the FIRE movement, it's its own, organically developed cultural movement in response to modern social media influencer brand promotion, wealth-porn, and tapping into the current zeitgeist of Gen Z economic despair.

It comes about organically within every generation. "FIRE" is just the Elder Millennial/Gen X version and I bet a bunch of boomer hippies looked at us and were like "wooooow...how original..."

[ChpBstrd]

For anyone wondering what the young kids are calling it these days, it's "under consumption core" on TikTok where people post videos about how they reduce their spending.

https://theconversation.com/understanding-underconsumption-core-how-a-new-trend-is-challenging-consumer-culture-235417

Why do we have to rebrand established terms. 😂

Because they are too young to have ever read anything by MMM or other FIRE bloggers. They're developing their own culture around reduced spending, largely driven by environmentalism and cynicism, and it's more of a product of push back against the established history of most influencers being flagrantly consumerist, and essentially just walking product placements.

There are influencers now whose entire brand is pushing back against messaging that you should be buying expensive, unnecessary products.

So it's not a co-opting of the FIRE movement, it's its own, organically developed cultural movement in response to modern social media influencer brand promotion, wealth-porn, and tapping into the current zeitgeist of Gen Z economic despair.

It comes about organically within every generation. "FIRE" is just the Elder Millennial/Gen X version and I bet a bunch of boomer hippies looked at us and were like "wooooow...how original..."

Perhaps though the FIRE movement had more emphasis on using stocks to get rich and work less than today's frugality content. TT/YT content on stocks is mostly WSB-style stock picking and options gambling to get rich, buy lambos, and find true love. Neither the hippies nor gen z were optimistic enough to get excited about holding mutual funds / index funds for a decade or two. So the 2000-2020s FIRE movement was unique in that way - combining the ideas of frugality with income growth and index fund investing, and creating lots of content chewing through the tradeoffs.

IDK if such a collection of complementary ideas is possible now, because instead of using search engines (2000-2010s tech for finding content) people today let algorithms select what's next on their short-video-based menu. So right after "engaging" with a TT video on FIRE you'll be served up sombody's YOLO gamble on a meme stock, or some wealth porn, or maybe an influencer selling a fire extinguisher.

You could use "FIRE" as a keyword (2000-2010s tech for being found), but the algo/AI will listen to words like stocks, investments, retirement, or savings to serve you up a bunch of 19 year olds throwing paychecks at Gamestop, or a sponsored ad about a fintech phone app to lose money in a gamified way, or the ever-present cryptobro. These results actually throw you off of the FIRE topic, but are more financially lucrative for the creators and platforms. This is why most content today is about a single simple topic, rather than a complex interaction of topics. Single topic videos lead to other content on the same single topic in an unbroken stream, and  therefore appear more popular than any synthesis of ideas.

[VanillaGorilla]

IDK if such a collection of complementary ideas is possible now, because instead of using search engines (2000-2010s tech for finding content) people today let algorithms select what's next on their short-video-based menu. So right after "engaging" with a TT video on FIRE you'll be served up sombody's YOLO gamble on a meme stock, or some wealth porn, or maybe an influencer selling a fire extinguisher.

You could use "FIRE" as a keyword (2000-2010s tech for being found), but the algo/AI will listen to words like stocks, investments, retirement, or savings to serve you up a bunch of 19 year olds throwing paychecks at Gamestop, or a sponsored ad about a fintech phone app to lose money in a gamified way, or the ever-present cryptobro. These results actually throw you off of the FIRE topic, but are more financially lucrative for the creators and platforms. This is why most content today is about a single simple topic, rather than a complex interaction of topics. Single topic videos lead to other content on the same single topic in an unbroken stream, and  therefore appear more popular than any synthesis of ideas.

Really? If I go to Youtube and search "how to retire early" the very first hit is an ad. The second hit is this video, which covers the basics of FIRE well. He covers the 4% rule, the Shockingly Simple Math, with screenshots of networthify, moneychimp, etc. I didn't watch it in its entirety but it's clearly familiar content. Here's Justin from Root of Good! That's about as legit as it gets. And here's The Plain Bagel with a more skeptical but realistic summary.

FIRE has gone mainstream. The New York Times covered it extensively, it's about as mainstream as it gets. The information is out there, easy to find, and has been beaten to death. Maybe that's the real story.

[nereo]

Search results have been tailored to the user to some degree for well over a decade. Try searching for a vague topic (eg “retirement advice” or “fun things to do near me”) on your device and that of someone much different from you (maybe a coworker or aunt) and see what results pop up. Results often diverge quickly after the top paid ads

[FireLane]

Just sayin', but I did an experiment on how much good financial advice there is on TikTok:

https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/welcome-to-the-forum/an-unscientific-experiment-how-much-good-fire-advice-is-there-on-tiktok/

TL;DR: Not as bad as I expected! If you searched on "early retirement," you'd get videos that covered the basic principles of FIRE. It wasn't all scams and meme stocks, like I thought it would be.

Of course, someone else searching on the same term may see something totally different because of how the algorithm works.

[twinstudy]

For anyone wondering what the young kids are calling it these days, it's "under consumption core" on TikTok where people post videos about how they reduce their spending.

https://theconversation.com/understanding-underconsumption-core-how-a-new-trend-is-challenging-consumer-culture-235417

Why do we have to rebrand established terms. 😂

Because they are too young to have ever read anything by MMM or other FIRE bloggers. They're developing their own culture around reduced spending, largely driven by environmentalism and cynicism, and it's more of a product of push back against the established history of most influencers being flagrantly consumerist, and essentially just walking product placements.

There are influencers now whose entire brand is pushing back against messaging that you should be buying expensive, unnecessary products.

So it's not a co-opting of the FIRE movement, it's its own, organically developed cultural movement in response to modern social media influencer brand promotion, wealth-porn, and tapping into the current zeitgeist of Gen Z economic despair.

It comes about organically within every generation. "FIRE" is just the Elder Millennial/Gen X version and I bet a bunch of boomer hippies looked at us and were like "wooooow...how original..."

Perhaps though the FIRE movement had more emphasis on using stocks to get rich and work less than today's frugality content. TT/YT content on stocks is mostly WSB-style stock picking and options gambling to get rich, buy lambos, and find true love. Neither the hippies nor gen z were optimistic enough to get excited about holding mutual funds / index funds for a decade or two. So the 2000-2020s FIRE movement was unique in that way - combining the ideas of frugality with income growth and index fund investing, and creating lots of content chewing through the tradeoffs.

IDK if such a collection of complementary ideas is possible now, because instead of using search engines (2000-2010s tech for finding content) people today let algorithms select what's next on their short-video-based menu. So right after "engaging" with a TT video on FIRE you'll be served up sombody's YOLO gamble on a meme stock, or some wealth porn, or maybe an influencer selling a fire extinguisher.

You could use "FIRE" as a keyword (2000-2010s tech for being found), but the algo/AI will listen to words like stocks, investments, retirement, or savings to serve you up a bunch of 19 year olds throwing paychecks at Gamestop, or a sponsored ad about a fintech phone app to lose money in a gamified way, or the ever-present cryptobro. These results actually throw you off of the FIRE topic, but are more financially lucrative for the creators and platforms. This is why most content today is about a single simple topic, rather than a complex interaction of topics. Single topic videos lead to other content on the same single topic in an unbroken stream, and  therefore appear more popular than any synthesis of ideas.

The FIRE movement was based on blogs and websites. With these, there has to be at least some pretence of giving information out. That's why a lot of the FIRE blogs/books focussed on personal finance and investing basics. "Kids these days" who search on Instagram or TikTok for reels are unlikely to come across informative FIRE reels. I'm sure they're out there. But you get a lot more engagement by focussing on something sensationalised, or funny - whether that's encouraging over-consumption, selling a dream lifestyle or something along those lines. "Do well in school, get a good job, invest steadily and wait" might work for a self-help book but I doubt it translates well to IG or Tik Tok.

[Metalcat]

The FIRE movement was based on blogs and websites. With these, there has to be at least some pretence of giving information out. That's why a lot of the FIRE blogs/books focussed on personal finance and investing basics. "Kids these days" who search on Instagram or TikTok for reels are unlikely to come across informative FIRE reels. I'm sure they're out there. But you get a lot more engagement by focussing on something sensationalised, or funny - whether that's encouraging over-consumption, selling a dream lifestyle or something along those lines. "Do well in school, get a good job, invest steadily and wait" might work for a self-help book but I doubt it translates well to IG or Tik Tok.

But the under consumption core content is quite popular, as is all of the content directly responding to consumerist videos.

In particular I've seen increased popularity of pushing back against expensive beauty products, nutritional supplements, and various other products that influencers have made fortunes promoting.

I agree that the investment side is trickier to make viral in short video form, but frugality is alive and well in the TikTok universe.

[MMMarbleheader]

The FIRE movement was based on blogs and websites. With these, there has to be at least some pretence of giving information out. That's why a lot of the FIRE blogs/books focussed on personal finance and investing basics. "Kids these days" who search on Instagram or TikTok for reels are unlikely to come across informative FIRE reels. I'm sure they're out there. But you get a lot more engagement by focussing on something sensationalised, or funny - whether that's encouraging over-consumption, selling a dream lifestyle or something along those lines. "Do well in school, get a good job, invest steadily and wait" might work for a self-help book but I doubt it translates well to IG or Tik Tok.

But the under consumption core content is quite popular, as is all of the content directly responding to consumerist videos.

In particular I've seen increased popularity of pushing back against expensive beauty products, nutritional supplements, and various other products that influencers have made fortunes promoting.

I agree that the investment side is trickier to make viral in short video form, but frugality is alive and well in the TikTok universe.

My unscientific polling agrees!

The local fair in my town has an annual rummage sale that is well known in Vermont. Vermont is a frugal weirdo stronghold to begin with anyways but there was a ton on Gen Z's there. There is a big table with piles of mens and womens clothes. The female Gen Z'ers were all over the mens clothes, especially the Jeans. And I give them credit because it looks way more comfortable than the skinny jean trends of yore!

[spartana]

The FIRE movement was based on blogs and websites. With these, there has to be at least some pretence of giving information out. That's why a lot of the FIRE blogs/books focussed on personal finance and investing basics. "Kids these days" who search on Instagram or TikTok for reels are unlikely to come across informative FIRE reels. I'm sure they're out there. But you get a lot more engagement by focussing on something sensationalised, or funny - whether that's encouraging over-consumption, selling a dream lifestyle or something along those lines. "Do well in school, get a good job, invest steadily and wait" might work for a self-help book but I doubt it translates well to IG or Tik Tok.

But the under consumption core content is quite popular, as is all of the content directly responding to consumerist videos.

In particular I've seen increased popularity of pushing back against expensive beauty products, nutritional supplements, and various other products that influencers have made fortunes promoting.

I agree that the investment side is trickier to make viral in short video form, but frugality is alive and well in the TikTok universe.

My unscientific polling agrees!

The local fair in my town has an annual rummage sale that is well known in Vermont. Vermont is a frugal weirdo stronghold to begin with anyways but there was a ton on Gen Z's there. There is a big table with piles of mens and womens clothes. The female Gen Z'ers were all over the mens clothes, especially the Jeans. And I give them credit because it looks way more comfortable than the skinny jean trends of yore!

Out here in La La Land used jeans - especially men's jeans for women (AKA boyfriend jeans) - are all the rage and are being sold at outrageous prices. The more ratier and faded the better. If I didn't love my old Levi 501 button fly jeans so much I'd sell them! So trendy here and all over social media sites. At least now, for a brief moment, Im fashionable ;-).

I just checked online and the real vintage ones I've saw were over a thousand buck a pair! Mine are from the 90s so not the $14,000 older ones but still around $250 each according to tik tok "influencers"

[MMMarbleheader]

The FIRE movement was based on blogs and websites. With these, there has to be at least some pretence of giving information out. That's why a lot of the FIRE blogs/books focussed on personal finance and investing basics. "Kids these days" who search on Instagram or TikTok for reels are unlikely to come across informative FIRE reels. I'm sure they're out there. But you get a lot more engagement by focussing on something sensationalised, or funny - whether that's encouraging over-consumption, selling a dream lifestyle or something along those lines. "Do well in school, get a good job, invest steadily and wait" might work for a self-help book but I doubt it translates well to IG or Tik Tok.

But the under consumption core content is quite popular, as is all of the content directly responding to consumerist videos.

In particular I've seen increased popularity of pushing back against expensive beauty products, nutritional supplements, and various other products that influencers have made fortunes promoting.

I agree that the investment side is trickier to make viral in short video form, but frugality is alive and well in the TikTok universe.

My unscientific polling agrees!

The local fair in my town has an annual rummage sale that is well known in Vermont. Vermont is a frugal weirdo stronghold to begin with anyways but there was a ton on Gen Z's there. There is a big table with piles of mens and womens clothes. The female Gen Z'ers were all over the mens clothes, especially the Jeans. And I give them credit because it looks way more comfortable than the skinny jean trends of yore!

Out here in La La Land used jeans - especially men's jeans for women (AKA boyfriend jeans) - are all the rage and are being sold at outrageous prices. The more ratier and faded the better. If I didn't love my old Levi 501 button fly jeans so much I'd sell them! So trendy here and all over social media sites. At least now, for a brief moment, Im fashionable ;-).

I just checked online and the real vintage ones I've saw were over a thousand buck a pair! Mine are from the 90s so not the $14,000 older ones but still around $250 each according to tik tok "influencers"

A always hit the rummage sale for a pair of wool hunting overalls from grandpas attic. Have not found them yet but I will keep trying!

[Just Joe]

Substack is weird to me. Writers can't make money through affiliate marketing on their blogs anymore, so people are going to subscribe to their substack instead? Admittedly I have yet to pay for one and I unsubscribed from 1 former PF blogger who was really pushy about moving stuff behind the paywall.

While I’m not 100% sold on the content I’ve found on Substack, I will say that reading Substack or a website on a competing platform, like Lede, is 10,000 times more pleasant than using the garden variety internet.

Virtually any website that *isn’t* behind a paywall is unreadable these days. Ads over ads over ads. “Click here to read the rest of the article”, which is like, an insane inversion. Etc. etc.

EFF Badger and uBlock Origin helps alot with that. This blog/forum is still pretty great although I wonder at some point the popular discussion topics will be exhausted at some point. 

[FIREin2018]

Lol, no, what you're seeing is the death of blogs and forums.

Reddit and TikTok FI communities are alive and well, we're all just old and out of touch.

With AI, i feel like my parents 30yrs ago when computers came out.
(have no clue about AI, how to get started, how to use it, etc)

[Metalcat]

Lol, no, what you're seeing is the death of blogs and forums.

Reddit and TikTok FI communities are alive and well, we're all just old and out of touch.

With AI, i feel like my parents 30yrs ago when computers came out.
(have no clue about AI, how to get started, how to use it, etc)

I took a quick ChatGPT course for business owners to help me understand it's role in my industry.

Now it's a lot easier to see it.

[FIREin2018]

Lol, no, what you're seeing is the death of blogs and forums.

Reddit and TikTok FI communities are alive and well, we're all just old and out of touch.

With AI, i feel like my parents 30yrs ago when computers came out.
(have no clue about AI, how to get started, how to use it, etc)

I took a quick ChatGPT course for business owners to help me understand it's role in my industry.

Now it's a lot easier to see it.

Is there a free online course for ChatGpt?

[Metalcat]

Lol, no, what you're seeing is the death of blogs and forums.

Reddit and TikTok FI communities are alive and well, we're all just old and out of touch.

With AI, i feel like my parents 30yrs ago when computers came out.
(have no clue about AI, how to get started, how to use it, etc)

I took a quick ChatGPT course for business owners to help me understand it's role in my industry.

Now it's a lot easier to see it.

Is there a free online course for ChatGpt?

I think I paid $10 for a course with 40hrs of lessons

[Missy B]

Lol, no, what you're seeing is the death of blogs and forums.

Reddit and TikTok FI communities are alive and well, we're all just old and out of touch.

With AI, i feel like my parents 30yrs ago when computers came out.
(have no clue about AI, how to get started, how to use it, etc)

I took a quick ChatGPT course for business owners to help me understand it's role in my industry.

Now it's a lot easier to see it.

Is there a free online course for ChatGpt?

I think I paid $10 for a course with 40hrs of lessons

Can you say which company you used? Or was it only available through a professional affiliation. I'm finding a lot of $84 for 2.5 hour type of courses.

[tj]

Lol, no, what you're seeing is the death of blogs and forums.

Reddit and TikTok FI communities are alive and well, we're all just old and out of touch.

With AI, i feel like my parents 30yrs ago when computers came out.
(have no clue about AI, how to get started, how to use it, etc)

I took a quick ChatGPT course for business owners to help me understand it's role in my industry.

Now it's a lot easier to see it.

Is there a free online course for ChatGpt?

I think I paid $10 for a course with 40hrs of lessons

Do you use ChatGPT for anything?

[JupiterGreen]

Why do we have to rebrand established terms. 😂

Ooo! I know this one - https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2024/06/social-media-american-slang-crisis/678754/

The thesis of the article is that an important part of language is to signal your identity to your in-group. The ubiquity of internet communication makes it incredibly difficult to know if someone's actually part of your group, or just happens to have picked up the language of your group without actually becoming fluent in your group's norms and culture. So once upon a time, this community used terms like 'face-punch' and if you happened to have a co-worker talk about face-punches in a spending context, it was a good bet they'd also know something about ETFs (because they'd be hanging around these forums).

On the other hand, if someone's talking about rizz (a term I only know because of the NYT mini) - that's not a good marker of their cultural context because they might have picked it up on tiktok.

Essentially, we need to rebrand established terms for one of two reasons:
1) Because the value of the term as a way to signal that we're part of the group has degraded (ie. FIRE's not cool anymore, let's talk about consumption-core); or
2) Because we want to add slight nuance to a term that only matters to someone who's already fluent in the concepts (ie. FIRE splitting into fat-FIRE/coast-FIRE/SWAMI)

I love this response, thanks.

[Metalcat]

Lol, no, what you're seeing is the death of blogs and forums.

Reddit and TikTok FI communities are alive and well, we're all just old and out of touch.

With AI, i feel like my parents 30yrs ago when computers came out.
(have no clue about AI, how to get started, how to use it, etc)

I took a quick ChatGPT course for business owners to help me understand it's role in my industry.

Now it's a lot easier to see it.

Is there a free online course for ChatGpt?

I think I paid $10 for a course with 40hrs of lessons

Can you say which company you used? Or was it only available through a professional affiliation. I'm finding a lot of $84 for 2.5 hour type of courses.

I don't remember, but it was probably Coursera or Udemy, I remember it was a course on how to use ChatGPT for business

[Metalcat]

Lol, no, what you're seeing is the death of blogs and forums.

Reddit and TikTok FI communities are alive and well, we're all just old and out of touch.

With AI, i feel like my parents 30yrs ago when computers came out.
(have no clue about AI, how to get started, how to use it, etc)

I took a quick ChatGPT course for business owners to help me understand it's role in my industry.

Now it's a lot easier to see it.

Is there a free online course for ChatGpt?

I think I paid $10 for a course with 40hrs of lessons

Do you use ChatGPT for anything?

I just used it to write a privacy policy and terms of use for a website, but no, it's not terribly useful for my particular business model at the moment, but it could be if I pivot my marketing strategy

[Fomerly known as something]

pay-for-play dinners with billionaires.

I don't understand this. Why would the billionaires go to dinner with strangers for money? Don't they already have enough money? Is it a charity thing?

Yes.  Take a political function.  Yes you are going to here some blowhard talk.  But you also get time to talk with other business people.  Maybe something said leads to some project for your company 6 months down the road.

[Metalcat]

pay-for-play dinners with billionaires.

I don't understand this. Why would the billionaires go to dinner with strangers for money? Don't they already have enough money? Is it a charity thing?

Yes.  Take a political function.  Yes you are going to here some blowhard talk.  But you also get time to talk with other business people.  Maybe something said leads to some project for your company 6 months down the road.

Yep.

No one can maintain power in a vacuum. Power depends on other people giving you that power, so the more powerful a person, the more dependent on others they are.

Being a billionaire is a shockingly vulnerable position to be in. My ex's father teaches an MBA course on how he lost billions of dollars by failing to anticipate how a certain group would withdraw their willingness to support his power.

[roomtempmayo]

For anyone wondering what the young kids are calling it these days, it's "under consumption core" on TikTok where people post videos about how they reduce their spending.

https://theconversation.com/understanding-underconsumption-core-how-a-new-trend-is-challenging-consumer-culture-235417

Why do we have to rebrand established terms. 😂

Pickleball is just rebranded badminton. 

[nereo]

For anyone wondering what the young kids are calling it these days, it's "under consumption core" on TikTok where people post videos about how they reduce their spending.

https://theconversation.com/understanding-underconsumption-core-how-a-new-trend-is-challenging-consumer-culture-235417

Why do we have to rebrand established terms. 😂

Pickleball is just rebranded badminton.

I think you are playing one or both sports very wrong.