More people are turning to bartering services in exchange for things<\/a> that they need, while others are turning to \u201cBuy Nothing\u201d groups on social media. The purpose of these groups is to give people a centralized place to list items they no longer want and request items they need. No money or services are exchanged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The practice of giving away items one person no longer needs is not new, but it is on the rise. Some people have declared they\u2019re not purchasing anything outside of necessities for the entire new year. For some buy nothing rebels, the move is strictly financial. They are looking for ways to save as much money as possible to offset rising costs in other areas, such as groceries and utilities. For others, refusing to buy unneeded items is a way to dial back consumerism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As people spend more time online, interacting with targeted ads has become the norm. Someone searches for comfy socks once, only to spend the next three months scrolling past sock ads. It does not take long to start thinking you might actually need those memory foam, microfiber, astronaut-tested space socks that promise to make every step feel like walking on a cloud. Adding to the sudden sense of need, at least two celebrities, a personal friend, and several influencers are now telling you how great they are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Buy nothing rebels are not only feeling the strain on their wallets, but also the pressure to buy things they do not need, and they are tired of it. Amare, who hosts the YouTube channel Amare\u2019s Approach<\/a><\/em>, shares how companies design ads to create a sense of missing out and push people to buy their products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou see, companies have been training us to chase this sense of not enough, and we fall for it again and again,\u201d Amare says. \u201cWe buy what we don\u2019t need, hoping to feel complete. Hoping to feel just anything, and that\u2019s exactly where the buy nothing rebellion starts. Noticing that trap, seeing the patterns, and then realizing that the desire itself is what they\u2019ve been selling. We keep chasing thinking, maybe the next thing will make me happy, but it never does. The product is never the point. It\u2019s the craving, the desire that they\u2019re actually selling us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Throughout the video, Amare points out that people are tired of being perpetual consumers, a mindset that leads to excessive spending. Buy Nothing groups let people get items both large and small for free. Sometimes the items are as small as plants, like when Lauren Click found dying aloe plants in her local Buy Nothing group. Instead of seeing trash, she saw multiple gifts, she told Scripps News<\/a>. She salvaged each living aloe pup, repotted them into smaller containers, wrapped each pot with a bow, and gave them away as gifts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is mutual aid. We are taking care of each other by sharing the things that we might no longer need but it will make a world of difference to a nearby family,\u201d Liesl Clark, founder of the Buy Nothing Project<\/a>, told TODAY<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Clark started the original project as a social experiment to see if people would help their neighbors. It quickly grew into a global movement, with more than 8,000 groups worldwide on social media. There is now an app for people who do not use Facebook but still want to participate. People can turn to the group when they are in need, such as when a single mother ran out of special formula for her infant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n No matter why someone joins the Buy Nothing Rebellion, it can help people in need, save money, and reduce textile waste entering the environment. According to Clark, it also helps people build community and get to know their neighbors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Buying nothing doesn\u2019t mean you won\u2019t spend money. Unfortunately, electric companies and doctors\u2019 offices do not trade old coffee pots for services, so spending on necessities is unavoidable. But if you\u2019re looking to reduce your overall spending, it can\u2019t hurt to join your local Buy Nothing group to see if someone is getting rid of the thing you need or want. Why spend the money if you don\u2019t have to?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cThe product is never the point. It\u2019s the craving, the desire that they\u2019re actually selling us.\u201d Buying nothing may sound like a quirky gimmick, something<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8547,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/702009468_1459504259543894_8242479545884089471_n.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8543"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8548,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8543\/revisions\/8548"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"buy](\"https:\/\/www.upworthy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/01\/origin_801639.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n