Don't Be Dumb
Marcus Kim
Don't Be Dumb investigates how everyday purchases slide from isolated transactions into sustained transactional relationships. Drawing from the psychology of consumerism, the project frames this shift as a form of psychological robbery, a system subtly organized and operated by corporations and market infrastructures, where value extraction extends beyond money into attention, behavior, and identity. What begins as a single exchange gradually becomes patterns of repetition, dependency, and normalization, sequentially transforming psychological capture into material consequence. Transactions are no longer neutral; they become mechanisms that script behavior, reinforce desire, and reorient personal agency toward systems of continuous consumption.
Methodologically, the project employs a publication composed of a fully redesigned system for interpreting receipts, leveraging their ephemerality and dense data structure to dramatize accumulation, waste, and repetition. Receipts, typically discarded, are reframed as artifacts of behavioral evidence, exposing the otherwise invisible infrastructures and rhythms of consumption.
By coupling design’s sensory appeal with critical reflection, this work contributes to discourse on consumer culture by clarifying how routine purchases evolve into identity scripts, and how “proofs of purchase” can be read as social and psychological texts. Ultimately, the project seeks to refocus attention on priorities and intentions within a hyper-exorbitant marketplace, offering a concrete, affective encounter with the layered costs—material, psychological, and human—of persistent over-consumption.