Treats are luxury consumer goods/services. It's a silly, trivializing term in order to counter the elevated status that people ascribe to luxuries, and usually gets combined into phrases like "treat brain" (obsession with consuming luxuries) or "treat lad" (someone whose identity is wrapped up in consuming luxuries). People need to be reminded that luxuries are above and beyond what is actually needed and aren't worth the cost of ruin and human misery that entirely too many of them have.
Treats can be defined as: consumable, perishable commodity produced and consumed for hedonic purposes. Includes but not limited to categories of food, toys, entertainment programs. (e.g: sugary and/or high carb food & snacks, plastic playthings or video games, your streaming services.)
In theory it's supposed to just distinguish between necessities and non-necessities and trivialize non-necessities, but without condemning them. Treats are good. Everybody likes having treats. But they are just treats and we could live without them if we had to. But that nuance is often lost in favor of "treats bad."
In theory it's supposed to just distinguish between necessities and non-necessities and trivialize non-necessities, but without condemning them. Treats are good. Everybody likes having treats. But they are just treats and we could live without them if we had to.
That's how I see it, too.
But that nuance is often lost in favor of "treats bad."
It sometimes gets caught up in "criticizing treat bad, treat critic bad" too.