Never alone
January 13th, 2008 | by Paul |I know I’m not all that original and that’s a good thing. There’s a heck of a lot of people out there using the Internet to talk about consumerism.
Granted, there’s a little irony there, as pointed out by this anonymous post on the Sustainable Enterprises Web site.
“If you are so anticonsumerism yourself, then where did you steal the computer that you used to make this web site? How do you get your electricity for free? Do you walk around naked? Were you home schooled? How about instead of saying anticonsumerism, we just just use the phrase responsible consumerism, then no one has to be a hipocrate.”
I just hate it when a dumb spelling error makes a pretty intelligent comment look bad.
Either way, there are a lot of people out there. And I don’t just mean the organized, official, one-way-flow-of-information Web sites linked to in the last post and now conveniently clickable on the sidebar. There are online groups like the 8,800-member Compact where people can sign on for a year of buying nothing new, get on their e-mail list or go to their blog and get involved in very interesting debates with others on the topic. There are Facebook groups, Usenet discussions, I mean, look at the blogs just on this site.
Not all of the sources are anticonsumerist, of course. Granted, the opposite of anticonsumerism is consumerism. It would be hard to link to every business and advertising firm Web site in the world. But some are directly against anticonsumerism. That link is to a Facebook group, so I copied the text below for non-members.
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On the arrogant impotence of the white middle class. Buy Nothing Day does nothing whatsoever to capitalism.Culture Jamming deploys symbolism that is lost on most everyone, rendering it as effective as a corporate billboard on a culture jammer. They’ve chosen graphic designers as the vanguard of the next revolution–if we may even call it that–an elitist rearrangement of capitalism. But of course, you can’t drive away consumerism for too long with capitalism in the background. They don’t think of that because of their privilege. They stigmatize mental illness with silly metaphors that equate their latte boredom with schizophrenia. They give conservatives very good reasons to hate the left. |
Pretty hardcore, huh? So, it’s a contentious topic and, if you think about these issues too, you’re not alone.