Stuff and fluff. These two words seem very vague at a glance, but as you dwell deeper into the mind of Lanham you come to the realization that these things mean much more and the fact of the matter is that our lives revolve around them. It seems more and more apparent that the “stuff” Lanham keeps referring to is the materialistic items and dream destinations we as consumers desire. But the stuff is only fractional compared to all the “fluff” that surrounds it. The fluff is all the ideas surrounding the stuff and what goes into creating new stuff. If that makes sense.
Well, it started coming to sense to me when Lanham started describing the modern-day consumer. The combination of stuff and fluff is apparent. Stuff now a days barely holds any sentimental value and is easily replaced. The stuff of our world is overglanced and underappreciated, because if push comes to shove and your stuff is destroyed or not available, you could either just replenish it or find some stuff that is similar that is available. It almost seems as if things nowadays are less authentic. This really struck home with me when Lanham was talking about the niche communities of people who like old things on that show “Antique Roadshow”. That just goes to show that things that are older were built to last, and there was more value in the stuff from back in the day. But now, there is so much fluff that stuff has lost its touch.
The more and more I read into “stuff and fluff” the more thoughts I have about it. I think it can be even more applicable outside of the world of consumerism. For instance, I think a lot of relationships you see nowadays are full of Lanham’s definition of “stuff and fluff”. In particular the stuff being the pictures and content people put out with their significant others. That would be the “stuff” aspect. But then you topple in all the “fluff” on top of it. That fluff being all the fake comments and lack of authenticity, which inevitably makes the “stuff” all that much more useless and fake.
Overall, I think what Lanham is trying to get at is that as stuff becomes more accessible, it will eventually lose its value. In turn, when that stuff starts to spin into turmoil, the emphasis of fluff becomes more apparent. The wordplay and rhetoric people use to try and make the stuff sound more appealing is what the modern day of consumerism is boiling down to. Unless something changes, I think the ways of the “stuff and fluff” will remain a constant in our society.
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