STOP! Before you click that button, ask yourself ‘where will it end?’.
End of life. We’re all helplessly trapped. Seduced, sucked in, oblivious, with little hope of escape.
It’s particularly evident with the purchasing paroxysm that is Black Friday followed by gizmo Monday and festive buying.
If it makes you feel a little bit better, it’s not our fault. Not until someone sits you down and spells it out so you get it. Which makes things a lot worse because we may want to make amends, but the solution is largely out of our hands.
This awful picture was put before me in the Buy Now! documentary on Netflix, something about the conspiracy of shopping.
I sat back on the couch looking for something to watch. Even that troubles me because all these streamers use similar psychology to “suggest” titles as that which entices you to shop. But I figured I would get an insight into the types of shoppers we on the couch had placed in the category of fools parting ways with huge sums of money for stuff branded “rich” instead of the budget brands we used to love because it was “on special” and “a bargain”. Imagine my shock when there was me, on the TV, doing what consumers are programmed, and often forced, to do: consume. A lot.
Buy Now! made me spitting mad, at my unthinking fallibility (when I could afford it) and at Them for making it so.
There are some powerfully scary Thems who saw the monster in its teens, cried mea culpa and quit to become Us and try to warn the rest of us.
There is the Amazon website developer who programmed us to, with a couple of clicks, get our hearts’ desires delivered to our doors even before we could click to add another new shiny thing to our carts; the adidas head marketing honcho who found a million ways to make everyone in the world want 50 pairs of new sneakers/workout takkies and “team” jerseys for every occasion; the Apple gadget genius who was one of the seeds that grew into the beast it is now (and if you’re an Android user, don’t look away ‒ they’re all the same, just slightly cheaper) and the Unilever CEO who helped deliver billions of “new! improved!” plastic-enclosed products to sell you.
They also reveal what many of us already know: that lekker new home appliance you stretched your budget to buy will break just after the warranty expires. Because it is designed to do so. The old planned obsolescence of a vital part that will cost more to fix than just getting a new one.
You’ll also meet the man known as the waste detective who follows the stench of gigantic shipments of First World un-recyclable toxic trash shipped in container-loads to Third World nations that gratefully take the money but have no idea what to do with it.
And if you, like me, thought you were a good little greenie, separating out the “recyclables”, think again. Just about all those little arrowy logos proudly proclaiming this product is recyclable are not. It all goes in the landfill to be buried or burnt. Another air, planet and ocean killer.
That divine new frock or budget-but-darling sandals ‒ both of which use cheap-to-make plastic-based material ‒ that will be worth it even if they only last six months? Landfill or Third World pollution junk. Ask the Ghanaians whose beaches are overflowing with rotting clothes, shoes and soft toys.
The monster of consumerism is not even an adult and still no one has a solution to an unharmful end-of-life plan for discarded trash.
These frightened experts’ best advice? Put your next shiny thing in the cart. Exit app. Check back in a month and if you still need it, then go to checkout.
Peace, out.
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