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I procrastinated starting this article. I was all set up and ready to begin writing when I received an email from a store I’ve never visited with a great deal on items I do not need and cannot afford, even with an outrageously good discount.
Philosophically, I am not a materialist. Practically, I really enjoy things, and the having of them. Sorry, another quick delay as I look at this $550 chess board. Seems a little extravagant but when you consider the savings, it would be silly not to have it.
Black Friday is, more than anything else, a startling reminder of how many companies you have thoughtlessly given your email to. The modern consumer experience presumes that we leave every store with a message to the company along the lines of, “Hey there, thanks for selling me this rug. Feel free to contact me as often as you would like, at all hours of the day, for the rest of my life.”
These fake holidays have grown like a horrible little tumour over the past decade, from something that would simply be a novelty bit of news footage at the end of a broadcast – where you see one or two Americans get trampled to death so another American can get a cheaper blender – to a worldwide economic pillar that businesses rely on to stay open for another year.
Black Friday has spawned its own terrible little twin, Cyber Monday, which offers the same products at mostly the same discounts, in mostly the same way, but does provide consumers with the opportunity to receive even more unwanted emails.
What I want to understand is why, as someone who understands marketing manipulation, is disgusted by modern excess, and has no want for more things, do I still find myself endlessly browsing these sale sites?
Perhaps it’s that, in the face of a year of belt-tightening, cost pressures and ardent self-denial, we relish the flirtation with such frivolous purchases. Oh, we shouldn’t – and we won’t – but what if we did? Gosh, though, what if we did?
Maybe it’s that we have reached the end of the year and surely we deserve just one little treat, right? For all we have endured, do we not deserve just one little treat? You’re saying that all our hard work and sacrifice is not deserving of one little $550 chess set where the squares light up in a way that I’d definitely find annoying after one day? Come on, now. Be reasonable.
Then there’s also the spectre of Christmas lurking over the horizon. Why, to buy a series of things right now would actually be thrifty, wouldn’t it? In fact, if what I am buying is a present for someone else, I am not being manipulated by a corporation, I am actually being a charitable and honourable human being that’s destined for sainthood the second these packages arrive at my door.
This is the end result of a system designed to weaponise our brain chemistry against us, manipulate our emotions, and make the convenience of purchase faster than rational thought. We always hear the complaint that holidays are invented by corporations, but rarely are they built without even the lip-service usually paid to those little concepts like love or religion or the importance of pancakes. We sacrifice our hard-earned money, and in a real sense, the wellbeing of our planet, as a massive supply chain is kicked into action at the click of a button.
Perhaps, in a decade or two, I will stand with my children over the smouldering ruins of the Earth we once knew, and I will explain to them that the chess board actually connects with other chess players around the world and the three times that I actually used it were very satisfying so sometimes you have to sacrifice a pawn, sometimes you have to sacrifice the Great Barrier Reef. You understand, right? Ah well, happy Black Friday shopping.
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James Colley is the head writer of the ABC’s Gruen and Question Everything as well as the author of The Next Big Thing published by Pantera Press
