"There is a point in our culture beyond which camp and kitsch no longer make the least ironic sense, where consumerism loses its last mooring to civilization, where even seemingly legitimate protest devolves into farce. That point is Black Friday... There’s a point where healthy consumerism becomes out-of-control marketing-driven commodity fetishism, and when we find ourselves checking our smartphones for last minute online deals while standing in line for a chain store opening at midnight on Thanksgiving, we are clearly too far gone. That’s insanity."
-- Andrew Leonard in Salon
The only thing more indicative of the end of the American empire than, say, the 2012 roster of GOP presidential nominees -- and maybe the success of the Kardashians -- is the fact that millions of people are fucking stupid enough to not only stand in line but attempt to beat each other nearly to death for bargains on "Black Friday." Not that anybody who participates in the Black Friday madness would give a crap, but the entire phenomenon is like a litmus test for me -- the perfect litmus test, actually. It works like this: If you get anywhere near a store or shopping mall today -- if saving a little money is worth willingly trudging through the traditional Boschian hellscape of those kinds of crowds to you -- then I don't want to know you and you deserve to be ridiculed endlessly by the rest of us who are sitting comfortably at home all day.
If you went shopping today, if you're proud of the deep discounts you got waiting in line at midnight, you need to be sterilized for the good of mankind.
No comments:
Post a Comment