Jessica Medina Of Happylilbrains On Modern Consumerism; What It Was, What It Is, How We Got Here, & What We Can Do About It

An Interview With Drew Gerber

The idea that humans only seek self-actualization after basic needs are met fails to address the high level of importance that modern society has placed on social belonging. I’d argue that social belonging is part of the safety and security tier, with how vital it is for overall mental health. Clickbait preys on this by appealing to a consumer’s primal physiological needs — for example commercials that advertise how their restaurant uses only organic and ethically sourced food is speaking to the basic need of food and survival.

Sometimes it feels like we all live in a hamster wheel and no matter how much we make, or how much we succeed, it is never enough. Even people making 6 or 7-figure incomes, can still feel that they are barely making it. Where did this “never-enoughness” come from? Were things always like this? When exactly did it change? What would be needed to return to an earlier framework of consumerism that doesn’t burn us all out?

In this series, we are talking to historians, journalists, authors, social science experts, sociologists, thought leaders, and other experts about the history and progression of modern consumerism. As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Jessica Medina.

Jessica Medina is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (#129383) who specializes in geek therapy and making therapy fun, engaging, and a safe place to comfortably explore emotions. Her superpower is taking geek and pop culture (i.e. Marvel, Disney, video games) and making them therapeutic while joining clients in gaming in session. She believes; strongly that we all are human- therapists included and can benefit from using creative outlets and digital escapes to cope. Her specialties are complex trauma, geek therapy, neurodiversity, and alternative lifestyles.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to know how you got from “there to here.” Inspire us with your backstory!

I started out as a elementary age school-based counselor during my last semester of grad school, in 2018. I had no experience or training working with kids and I only had 30 minutes to quickly get them interested, talk about the hard stuff, and wrap it in a pretty package; before sending them back to class. Understandably, trying to do that and not send the kiddo back a sobbing mess was a challenge. I started using board games like Monopoly or Life to talk about things like divorce, depression, emotions as a whole. Things were going so well!…. until the pandemic hit and 2020 happened. I quickly transitioned to completely virtual through telehealth and was at a loss for how to keep the connection with my clients. I had one very young child client with selective mutism who hadn’t spoken a word at school for 2 years. The only thing they were interested in was Roblox, so I leaned into it. Typically their caregiver would pick a game for them and we’d play together in session but one day, the parents both had a meeting. This was the first time the kiddo whispered a single word to me when telling me what they wanted to play. This quickly progressed to 200 words a session at full volume, all because I joined his virtual world in Roblox. I leaned into this world of geek therapy and discovered my adult clients were using Animal Crossing to cope. Fast forward to now, I specialize in geek therapy and I use the games themselves, along with pop culture, to join in with my clients. I’ll play games in session and use that as the modality for interventions. Frustrated? Let’s play some Call of Duty and work through that frustration. Feeling lonely? Let’s play an MMORPG. Therapy doesn’t have to be boring and I’m here to help make therapy fun.

What lessons would you share with yourself if you had the opportunity to meet your younger self?

So often, we hear that hindsight is 20/20 but if I had the opportunity to meet my younger self, I’d want to hug her so bad. I’d want to tell her that it’s ok to heal from trauma. That healing from trauma doesn’t mean you lose the good parts that came from it like resiliency and independence. I want to tell her that she is so strong in ways she wouldn’t realize until years later. I want to tell her that no man or woman will fill that void she was missing in not loving herself. I want to tell her to trust her instincts, they were right all along. I want to remind her to never ever believe anyone who makes her question her worth. I want to tell her that family isn’t just blood and that she will have many whole new amazing families that surround her in love. I want to tell her that her dreams of making a difference in the world do come true and that not even 10 years down the road she is doing her exact dream. It got better mini-Jess. In ways words will never be able to describe.

None of us are able to experience success without support along the way. Is there a particular person for whom you are grateful for that support to grow you from “there to here?” Can you share that story and why you are grateful for him or her?

There are so many people I’d love to list that helped keep me sane throughout my growth from “there to here” — my husband, my colleagues, my friends. If I had to pick one person who was absolutely crucial to my development as a clinician, it’d be Dr. Lisa Mori, PhD. She was my supervisor at my first agency and she taught me the importance of being able to trust my clinical judgement and my instincts — a valuable lesson that is so important to this day. She taught me how to format my notes for insurance approvals and auditing. She taught me the “why” behind what we do and held me to such high standards (being honest I hated it at first) — that it helped shape me into a damn good clinician. The most important lesson though was to hold space for myself at the end of the day — to make sure I was listening to my mind and my body when it needed rest and to not push myself beyond my own limits in detrimental ways.

What day-to-day structures do you have in place for you to experience a fulfilled life?

I absolutely love this question. With my clients, I always ask, “how are you making time for yourself?”. In such a busy world, it’s so easy to get caught up in the “doing” that we forget the “being”. I’m far from perfect when it comes to self-care, but I have a pretty consistent day-to-day structure that helps me feel fulfilled. I start my day with my cup of happiness and go-juice (coffee), have a nice cuddle with my fur demons (a very derp maltipoo and endless energy cairne terrier), and make time for video games at least once in my day. Taking this time to myself to pause and unwind before and after my work day helps me reconnect to the person behind the therapist chair.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think it might help people?

So many wonderful things on the horizon! I have my ongoing project of “If The Couch Could Speak” which is an unscripted and unedited podcast of mental health therapists talking about life on the other side of the couch. The goal of this podcast is to increase transparency in therapy, reduce the stigma of mental health, and give an insight into the person-side of therapists. It’s part education, part hilarious entertainment.

I also am working on a video game review series where I explore what games are helpful for different mental health topics across various age groups. My goal is to create a badge-like system where you can easily see games that can help with executive dysfunction, anxiety, learning coping skills, socialization, frustration tolerance, and so much more. Video games can be so useful for self-care!

Ok, thank you for sharing your inspired life. Now let’s discuss the “ism” behind most marketing: consumerism. To begin, can you share with our readers a bit about why you are an authority on the history of consumerism?

Great question! I’m a child of the 90’s — a period of time where we were constantly bombarded with technological advancements (remember Blockbuster?) and simultaneously marinated in the consumerism of “bigger, better, new”. As a clinician, I explore with my clients the anxiety of internalized consumerism. What I mean by that is if we are constantly seeing the pressure of consumerism in our media, ads everywhere (even when driving on the freeway or pausing streaming services), and pressure from peers to have the nicest/newest version of something — it’s no wonder that we too feel the constant drive for bigger, better, new. When this becomes internalized, it becomes a cognitive dissonance of not being enough. Not being good enough, not having enough, not doing enough — all to compete and keep up with the rapid advancements in consumerism.

Let’s begin with a basic definition so that we are all on the same page. How do you define the concept of consumerism?

I define consumerism as the act of consuming — in this case purchasing goods. Taking it a step further, I define consumerism as the societal idea that an individual’s well-being and overall happiness is dependent on obtaining consumer goods and material possessions — about having the newest and greatest in technology, entertainment, clothes, etc. I would honestly equate it almost to materialism.

Throughout history, marketing has driven trade for humans. What role do you see that marketing played to get human societies where we are today?

I would argue that marketing has been the single most influential driving factor for consumerism today. The technological boom of the 1990’s and early 2000’s — largely due to Y2K and the movement into a new millennium — led to very fast advancements and evolved from borrow-based entertainment such as Blockbuster and Redbox to nearly every household using some form of streaming services. Technology has advanced so much that iPods have now become obsolete this year. We are truly a society of consumption and with the constant advancements, we feel the societal pressure to have the same material possessions or consumer goods as our peers. Playing into this need to “fit in”, we see marketing nearly everywhere we go now — on eye-catching billboards on the freeway, on the radio, ads before we can continue enjoying our media platforms (i.e. YouTube, Spotify). Marketing has evolved to the point where even when streaming services are paused, we see ads. Within this, we see underperformance of products, quality of services, and deceptive advertisement. Often when we buy the newest and greatest, technology capabilities advance further than the device capabilities and we start to see new devices being created to keep up (i.e. newest phone models, PS5). This then leads to even more consumerism so we can simply continue to use a product that previously worked. See how this quickly evolves into a never-ending cycle? To keep up with this, many go into debt which in turn affects mental health and leads to things like stress and depression. Consumerism forces people to work harder and borrow more despite their own detriment.

Different cultures view trade/consumerism differently. For example, many 21st-century marketing professionals in a capitalistic society will discuss solving human “pain points” as a way to sell products, services, and other wares successfully. How do cultures differ? Please give examples or studies you may know about.

Great question! I’ll turn my focus to digital marketing and how it utilizes culture to boost consumerism. One such study in particular, “Discourse Analysis of Online Product Reviews: A Discussion of Digital Consumerism and Culture” (Park & Lee, 2019) explores the cultural differences in digital consumerism in online product reviews from the United States and South Korea. The results of this study indicated there are significant cultural differences between both countries in the areas of online product reviews and messaging strategies used to express digital consumerism. To clarify a bit, in the United States — online product reviews included mainly economic, technologic, and social power whereas economic power was most frequently observed in South Korea followed by social and technological power. The message strategies used in this study were transformational messages.

TLDR; the results of this study showed that there are absolutely cultural differences indicating that consumers from more individualistic cultures (i.e. U.S.) tend to focus more on economic power, technologic power, and social power whereas consumers from a collectivistic culture (i.e. South Korea) tend to primarily focus on economic power, followed by social and technological power.

This study also found that informational messages are used to express technological power, economic power, and legal power which implies that consumers need objective information about a product. Transformational messages were mainly used to express social power. What this means is that communicating with other consumers is mainly done by sharing emotional experiences and personal stories rather than sharing objective information.

So in short — marketing is targeting the sociological “pain points” by tugging on our heart feels and playing into our desires from individualistic or collectivist viewpoints.

Was the phenomenon of “pain point” or “not enough in marketing” ushered in during the industrial revolution? Or, how did the Cold War impact this? Perhaps even Manifest Destiny? How have human technological advances impacted trade and marketing professionals’ obsession to solve human “pain points?”

I would argue that the phenomenon of “pain point” marketing has been around as long as consumerism has been around and certainly both during the industrial revolution and the Cold War. With the Industrial Revolution, there was a focus on steam and waterpower and we saw the rise of the mechanized factory system. This was the birth of “bigger, faster, better” that we still see in today’s marketing. During this time, society as a whole saw unprecedented, sustained growth in income and population and technological advancements drastically improved the standard of living. This is also where we saw the emergence of the modern capitalistic economy. The technological developments such as iron making, invention of machine tools, textiles, and steam power made life overall easier — directly addressing the pain points of this period.

We saw this drive for “bigger, faster, better” with manifest destiny in the 19th century as a settlers expanded across North America. We saw it again in the Cold War. Humans are social creatures with the innate drive to procreate, thrive, and survive. Both ancient and modern marketing plays into the thrive and survive and equates consumerism with survival. It preys on the pain points and often appears to swoop in with this amazing product that is absolutely essential for thriving in society or overall survival.

In modern marketing, most successful business ideas speak directly to a customer’s pain points. Even in my field of Psychology, every marketing platform or course highlights the importance of speaking to a client’s pain point. The idea behind this is that you are solving a problem with innovative and groundbreaking ideas. Going a bit deeper, there’s both internal and external pain points. External focuses on problems that all potential customers face, the big picture problems (i.e. Airbnb) — a need was heard and a solution was created. Internal pain points are areas that are present in industries that already exist — high cost, poor customer service, etc.

Marketing focuses on these areas and highlights needs that aren’t being met or aren’t being met sufficiently. It places the business in a solution provider role and typically focuses on the convenience aspect while highlighting how “innovative” it is.

Modern pain points have focused on digital connection, such as during the COVID pandemic all commercials were about online platforms to communicate with loved ones. Over the past decade or so, we’ve seen technology as a focus of the “bigger, better, faster” mindset, even expanded to vehicles with self-driving features or one that can dance to music. We’ve seen the iPod go obsolete because of the pain point focus of “faster”. The modern consumer no longer wants to download or purchase music for listening on the go, nor do they want to pay for things like a TV subscription when services like Spotify allow for instant streaming and Netflix allows for viewing on the go.

In your opinion, how has the way humans consumed their news impacted trade, consumerism, and human development? Can you please explain what you mean?

The way humans consume their news absolutely impacts trade, consumerism, and human development. As a child therapist I can monologue on how news consumption affects human development as a whole, but that’s a topic for another day. I’ll focus on the effect of media on consumerism. We saw radio emerge in the 1920’s, one of the first times that information and entertainment was readily available at the consumer’s fingertips. This gave businesses and corporations access to exploit the importance of image and social status at this time which was further exploited when televisions were invented. Through televisions, advertisers were able to focus on the democratization of luxury, causing a significant increase in status consciousness. This evolved from catering to the upper class to marketing them as necessities of all classes — making the consumer feel like they are upgrading themselves socially. While status is being sold, material objects are being consumed.

Modern marketing focuses on digital arenas such as social media (i.e. Instagram, TikTok). It has evolved to include the role of the influencer, someone with very high social status that followers are more inspired to follow their product recommendations. Businesses nowadays rely on this “authority figure” mindset of consumers and will collaborate with influencers in paid marketing (often disguised with simple hashtags such as #ad) or we see product placements in a post.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs indicates that humans only seek self-actualization after basic needs are met. How do you think “clickbait” impacts Maslow’s hierarchy and the overall human development?

Going into the psych side! I love it! The idea that humans only seek self-actualization after basic needs are met fails to address the high level of importance that modern society has placed on social belonging. I’d argue that social belonging is part of the safety and security tier, with how vital it is for overall mental health. Clickbait preys on this by appealing to a consumer’s primal physiological needs — for example commercials that advertise how their restaurant uses only organic and ethically sourced food is speaking to the basic need of food and survival. When physiological needs are met, advertisers then focus on safety. We see this in insurance commercials or insurance companies appealing to safety motivations. This would look like a car commercial featuring the safety ratings of a new car or insurance companies focusing on the fear of not being able to recover from an illness or economic damage. This marketing sends the message that the company will protect them from such dangers. When it comes to love and belonging needs, companies focus on building a brand that gives the consumer a sense of community and belonging — satisfying the psychological need.

Clickbait, often fueled by likes and interest data collected across all digital platforms we use, preys on these aforementioned areas and aims to align the marketing message with the psychological needs and motivations of the consumer. It uses this mined data to provide relevant products and services that it knows the consumer is actively seeking, appearing like they’re speaking directly to our needs when in reality it was perfectly created marketing to purposely affect these areas.

For you personally, if you have all your basic needs met, do you feel you have enough in life? Can you please explain what you mean?

Of course I’m not immune to consumerism, I’m a 90’s kid afterall and my entire developmental period was saturated in it. This has affected how I develop my personal goals. What I mean by that is I personally am ingrained with the drive to always be better than I currently am. Was this a product of my parents or consumerism? It’s hard to say. Looking at my goals themselves — I’d like a bigger home. This is both a basic need and a consumerism-inspired goal. It’s hard not to compare my existing space with #goals spaces I see on social media with super aesthetically pleasing décor. As a geek therapist, I’m forced to evolve with the expanding technology to keep up with performance capabilities (i.e. getting the new PS5 or computer upgrades). Eventually, existing technologies become obsolete so in a way, it’s a never ending and self-perpetuating cycle. It’s hard not to have basic needs intertwined with consumerism.

You are a person of enormous influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I’m currently in the works with my best-friend to create a badge-based system where we review video games and explore the implications it has on improving mental health. Ideally, I’d like to have specific badges that indicate the specific mental health diagnoses or symptoms that it can help with (i.e. executive dysfunction, distress tolerance). This would be helpful with both clinicians and clients for self-care and geek therapy treatment. My absolute dream would be to collaborate with Steam, Twitch, EA games and other video game platforms to implement these badges in game development and marketing to both expand the awesomeness of geek therapy and decrease the stigma of mental health overall.

What is the best way for our readers to continue to follow your work online?

Feel free to check out my website: www.happylilbrains.com.

I’m also all over social media with the handle @happylilbrains (twitter, tiktok, instagram)

If you’re interested in my podcast, check us out on YouTube, Anchor, or Spotify — If The Couch Could Speak

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent on this. We wish you only continued success.

About The Interviewer: For 30 years, Drew Gerber has been inspiring those who want to change the world. Drew is the CEO of Wasabi Publicity, Inc., a full-service PR agency lauded by PR Week and Good Morning America. Wasabi Publicity, Inc. is a global marketing company that supports industry leaders, change agents, unconventional thinkers, companies and organizations that strive to make a difference. Whether it’s branding, traditional PR or social media marketing, every campaign is instilled with passion, creativity and brilliance to powerfully tell their clients’ story and amplify their intentions in the world. Schedule a free consultation at WasabiPublicity.com/Choosing-Publicity