Buying a house is never a simple thing for young people. Taking Xiaolei as an example, for ordinary migrant workers like us who wander in big cities, it can be said that it is more difficult than winning the lottery to buy a house in the city without relying on family "support", and renting a house has become the only choice at this stage. However, as the social software said, "the house is rented and life is your own". In order to make the rented house look like a trace of life, more and more young people choose to buy all kinds of small appliances for their small "home". With Xiaolei, a group with high consumption desire and low consumption power who "can't keep money in hand" and "have money now and spend now", resourceful businessmen will certainly not let go of this market. So this year, we can see more and more small appliances on both e-commerce platforms and social media. Some of them occupy the advertising signs of the electronic business platform, some of them are hidden in tiktok and the photo books shared by the bloggers. These small appliances have different functions, and some of them even seem strange - such as an oven that can be used to incubate chickens, but they all sell their vision of a better life to potential buyers with fresh filters, as if you can live a better new life like a video blogger. But then again, are these appliances really useful? Or to put it another way, can these small household appliances really change users' lives? According to the ranking list of data released by the second-hand trading website, the changes of small household appliances to daily life seem to compete with 5g network. In the list of the top ten useless goods in 2021, idle fish listed the "useless goods of the year" according to the second-hand gray eating keywords, including air fryer, treadmill, curling stick, breakfast machine, wall breaker and other popular small household appliances. Although the way and algorithm of idle fish sorting out the list may not reflect the real performance of these small household appliances, this list can still explain the problem from the perspective of "ash eating rate". So are small appliances really IQ tax? "Small household appliances" is "IQ tax"? Generally speaking, all small household appliances are called IQ tax. This view is indeed a little extreme in Xiao Lei's view. However, looking back at the descriptions of these famous small household appliances on the list, it is not difficult to find the reasons why these household appliances eat ash - there are only two reasons why small household appliances "eat ash": Fabricating demand out of nothing; Simple problems complicate. Let's first analyze the first case, and the air fryer, the top of the top ten useless commodities in 2021, is the best example of making something out of nothing. Note that I don't mean to say that the air fryer is "increasing demand". For users with actual cooking scenes, the air fryer can really enrich the means and final taste of making their own explosives. But at this stage, the vast majority of video bloggers who bring goods for air fryers are really packaging products that users don't need into necessities of life and asking users to pay for them. First of all, the capacity of the air fryer is generally small. Although the working principle is a little similar to that of the electric oven, the volume limits other use scenarios of the air fryer and can only be used for baking in small quantities. In addition, unlike the imagination of young people who don't touch Yang spring water and eat all by starvation, air fryers also need traditional kitchen materials, and they also need to clean the complicated hanging basket by themselves after use. From the description, the complexity of cleaning is undoubtedly the main reason why the air fryer eats ash. The best example of the complexity of simple problems is undoubtedly the breakfast machine. In sharing, the breakfast machine can make a variety of different breakfasts at one time. It can easily fry eggs, cook porridge and bake sandwiches with a baking pan. It is a model of saving time and effort. Like all small household appliances aimed at novices in cooking, manufacturers often like to complicate simple problems, and emphasize that this highly integrated integrated equipment is the real simple and convenient choice. But even if we put aside the preparation and cleaning steps for the time being, as far as breakfast is concerned, an induction cooker and a most basic pan can complete most of the operation of the breakfast machine, and even make it more convenient to use. Although small household appliances in the kitchen have become frequent customers of the gray list, in fact, there are still many small household appliances in life that can be explained by the two situations just mentioned. In this case, the relationship between small household appliances and "IQ tax" is clear at a glance. For those small household appliances sold to the wrong user groups, calling it IQ tax seems to be a little too much. These products are not wrong, but do not meet the actual needs of users. However, those products that increase demand and complicate simple problems do have some meaning of "IQ tax" in Xiaolei's personal opinion. After all, is it a consumerism trap? In fact, from the perspective of products, the so-called "IQ tax" products are actually manufacturers' wrong estimation of users' needs. Since the outbreak of the epidemic, young people have to focus their attention on rental houses and dormitories that are opposite to themselves but do not belong to them for a long time. At the same time, it has also promoted the rapid growth of the small household appliance market. In early 2020, emerging enterprises focusing on small household appliances once outperformed the A-share market, which is enough to reflect the attraction of small household appliances to consumers at that time. However, the increase of market participants in small household appliances has also opened up the competition in the small household appliance market. As a "fast-selling product" in household appliances, small household appliances also have the same brand differentiation as fast-selling clothing: Brands without R & D strength fight price wars by reducing manufacturing costs, while brands with R & D ability begin to quickly find or even "fabricate" user needs, and put the corresponding products on the market in a very short time, so as to seize the market segment of small household appliances. Some of these fast-moving products hit the real pain point of consumers, became popular in the market, and were quickly used for reference by other brands; Some perfectly missed all the needs of consumers and naturally became "IQ tax". The rise of consumerism and the improvement of purchasing power make more and more young people make hasty purchase decisions. With the help of merchants and bloggers, more and more small household appliances that are not needed are purchased by young people without a clue. Naturally, these household appliances will end up as an "IQ tax" on second-hand platforms. Although the so-called IQ tax in the small household appliance market is largely a concrete manifestation of consumerism, from another perspective, the IQ tax of small household appliances actually means that the small household appliance market has transformed from traditional functional consumption to a compound consumption with "life attitude" or "lifestyles". Users no longer buy small household appliances for use, but pursue the "spiritual pursuit" behind small household appliances. For example, buying juicer and wall breaking machine is a symbol of their "healthy life", although this juicer is snapped up by staying up late at 0 o'clock. In the face of market transformation, there is not much we can do as a single consumer. Brands will not change their product strategy and layout in order to take care of the ideas of any single consumer. But as consumers, we actually have a way to regain the initiative in the trap of consumerism. The simplest way can be summarized in one sentence: if you are hesitant about whether you need a small appliance, it means you don't need it. (Xinhua News Agency)