The commercialization of happiness is one of the paradigmatic philosophical problems of contemporary global consumer culture, as the market for wellness services, self-help, and online platforms offers wellness as a commodity for sale, while more and more people in developed countries experience depression, anxiety, or disappointment in their lives. This is a paradox that requires not empirical but philosophical research: the oversupply of wellness services and the deterioration of well-being. This work aims to unravel the philosophical premises of the commercialization of happiness in global consumer culture by analyzing its simulation logic, disciplinary practices of gender, and their traumatic consequences. The methodology includes philosophical discursive analysis, Derrida’s deconstruction, and comparative philosophical analysis of the Frankfurt School and poststructuralist models based on 40 scientific articles published in 2018–2025. The analysis proves that consumer culture creates a simulacrum of happiness — a copy without an original — which structurally displaces real well-being instead of providing it. Gender discourses of success are disciplinary practices that have colonized subjectivity, transforming structural inequality into individual failure, a process of self-alienation. The impossibility of commercializing well-being creates a philosophically different version of trauma, rethinking the current mental health crisis as a structural rather than an individual problem. Alternatives based on the philosophical foundations of intrinsic values and non-market values can provide real conceptual material to counter this colonization of the inner world of the individual. Such results add to philosophy an interdisciplinary interpretation of the study of happiness that simultaneously advances critical theory, feminist philosophy, and well-being.
The commercialization of happiness is one of the paradigmatic philosophical problems of contemporary global consumer culture, as the market for wellness services, self-help, and online platforms offers wellness as a commodity for sale, while more and more people in developed countries experience depression, anxiety, or disappointment in their lives. This is a paradox that requires not empirical but philosophical research: the oversupply of wellness services and the deterioration of well-being. This work aims to unravel the philosophical premises of the commercialization of happiness in global consumer culture by analyzing its simulation logic, disciplinary practices of gender, and their traumatic consequences. The methodology includes philosophical discursive analysis, Derrida’s deconstruction, and comparative philosophical analysis of the Frankfurt School and poststructuralist models based on 40 scientific articles published in 2018–2025. The analysis proves that consumer culture creates a simulacrum of happiness — a copy without an original — which structurally displaces real well-being instead of providing it. Gender discourses of success are disciplinary practices that have colonized subjectivity, transforming structural inequality into individual failure, a process of self-alienation. The impossibility of commercializing well-being creates a philosophically different version of trauma, rethinking the current mental health crisis as a structural rather than an individual problem. Alternatives based on the philosophical foundations of intrinsic values and non-market values can provide real conceptual material to counter this colonization of the inner world of the individual. Such results add to philosophy an interdisciplinary interpretation of the study of happiness that simultaneously advances critical theory, feminist philosophy, and well-being.
