On The Sign Consumption Of The Youth

The consumer society is a historic change in human society and it started to form in 1970 s. The consumer society originated in 1914 when US Fordist production model allowed a substantial increase in productivity. From this time, the Western capitalist countries progressed from the shortage economy to the affluent economy and generated the possibility of leisure consumption. Consumerism has changed people’s consumption concept. Also, the concept of symbol consumption was born, the meaning of which is not only "object consuming", but also "using value". People pay more attention on the fact that the “self-worth” can be realized from "symbolic value", the meaning of social construction of the goods itself. With the development of mass media and visual cultures, the symbol consumption has become a postmodern characteristic of consumer society. On one hand, in order to promote the production of consumption, whereas the production of goods is no longer just rely on people’s "needs principle " but depends on the principle of people’s desire. At the same time, people’s consumption status "actively" switched from rational consumption to conspicuous consumption and emotional consumption. Subordinate human consumption has become a symbol of people’s independent and external to the alien object, whereas above the individual consumers.On the other hand, consumption means "mass consumption" and the youth is the main force of mass consumption nowadays, making the research of symbol consumption concentrating on the youth in the consumer society has depth and values. This paper uses the theory of cultural studies as the direction and chooses "Artistic fans", a new generated phenomenon from the youth, to explain the current youth symbol consumption.