I think because we feel that there is no real purpose to being alive, we need entertainment and distractions.
I often wish we had a star trek society where people would work on things that benefitted society in some way, instead of for money. It would have much more meaning because your talents would benefit other people, not corporations.
Someone who likes to draw would just draw and become appriciated for having great art, much like open source works today. Or if you enjoy making beautiful furniture, or robots.
What is destroying us is that we all work for being rewarded by money, not for appriciation from our peers. For me personally, the appriciation i get for working on open source projects is enough to keep me going and being happy with the work.
Some people say that most people would do nothing if they didn’t have to work. I think they would want to do something. Because almost everyone would want to feel they have a purpose besides just existing. That is why we feel empty now at most jobs.
Well first you need guaranteed food, shelter and safety for everyone, so people don’t feel existential pressures. Which means you have to start with utopia before expanding on the ideas you present…
Only sheeple shop on Black Friday. An astute and correct observation.
Note the author doesn’t use the word sheeple, but “black-friday” and “cyber-monday” he argues are top-down orders to the masses to consume, and he is absolutely correct.
I’d hardly call them “orders.” I will shop for deals on both days, but that doesn’t mean I’m actually going to buy anything, especially with all the price tracking extensions available and the severe lack of actual discounts over the last few years. I will only buy things that are actually on sale and things that I actually want/need prior to me seeing them on discount.
I’d hardly call them “orders.”
Hmm…
I will shop for deals on both days
Yea…that’s the point.
The point is to increase sales. Browsing a website or walking through a store and not buying anything doesn’t generate any revenue for a business. Nothing is being consumed, nor is anyone being forced to buy things against their will as the term “ordered” would suggest.
Do you get this bent out of shape when a store has a sale or promotion at any other point in the year?
As unnecessary consumption is one of the roots of suffering in our world, yea. I don’t like sales culture. You don’t need any “good deals” in your life, it’s not going to make you happy. And your Pavlovian response to a fictitious holiday is the theme of the article.
Lol I’d hardly call it a Pavlovian response. It’s more that it’s a well known date for stores to have sales on their merchandise, which is why people shop around on those days. I don’t see what’s so offensive about saving some money on a purchase you were going to make anyway, but I think there is some projection happening here.
I love this “Cultural malware” as a name for things like these.
It’s an interesting article, I couldn’t help but think of how “Pirate Speak” really comes from Robert Newton’s acting in a famous Disney movie. So while it predates big tech’s debasement of culture it’s still a “top down” artifact, in a way. I guess you could say it came from a creative decision of an artist (Newton adapting his native accent) and initially caught on for good fun rather than for profit. So far less cynical than the radioactive shit getting pumped out now, if for no other reason than in the 1950s Disney hadn’t figured that shit out yet.
Newton’s Long John Silver was a solid enough performance to warrant a sequel / spin-off, so TTAPD would be like a day to honor Bela Lugosi’s Dracula or even James Earl Jones’ Darth Vader.
These people have absolutely made their mark on American culture.
Black Friday, the shopping day is a gimmick taking advantage of an already popular shopping day. Not necessarily the most popular or most profitable or even the worst day for shopper shennanigans and violence. But then, it’s difficult for capitalist phenomena to not be turned into gimmicks used to market more sales.
Black Friday, the shopping day is a gimmick
And one that’s been exported to other countries who don’t even have the same national holiday adjacent to that friday giving people the excuse to shop more on that particular day.
Here it’s nothing but a cynical corporate cash grab.
Similar top-down cultural phenomenon dictated by corpos is concept of “personal carbon footprint” - as a means of shifting blame and focus from them to individuals. This is almost conspiracy level unbelievable when heard for the first time, but true nonetheless.
Honestly this is one of the ones I’m most sick of. Yes, everyone can do their part, but we aren’t even close to scraping the surface of the massive amounts of CO2 corpos are dumping comparatively.
yep, the concept of a “personal carbon footprint” was literally invented by an advertising agency working for British Petroleum https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/23/big-oil-coined-carbon-footprints-to-blame-us-for-their-greed-keep-them-on-the-hook
Yup. Black Friday and Amazon’s Prime Day are complete bullshit. I found out early when I saw a monitor I was tracking raise in price drastically then ‘drop’ to a sale price for Black Friday. When people wisened up to that companies started playing the ‘model number’ game, where they release the same TV or device but with a different model number to specifically skew prices and act like you’re getting a deal. It’s probably one of the best examples of late stage capitalism I’ve seen.
Which? - the UK consumer advice group, did an investigation into this and found that 92% of items they checked had been cheaper within the previous year than they were on Black Friday
There has been an improvement - and regulations - in this regard over time, so you both may be right.
I’m increasingly convinced that there is no ‘we’. Rather, ‘we’ increasingly experience the world as isolated and alienated people who are mostly stuck in urban environments dominated by physical corporate and state interfaces (billboards, store-fronts, infrastructure etc) whilst also being stuck behind computers and smartphones dominated by Big Tech, which tries to feed us that illusion that the Internet is a ‘global village’.
Yes 🤡
I ended up getting some ssds last black Friday, but only because they were 20% cheaper than they’d been all year. Now the prices are even higher, so I don’t feel like I bought at the wrong time
Your anecdote is valid but data says most idiots get fleexed due to lack of DD
Oh totally. If you’re not watching the prices of something you want and just using it as an opportunity to impulse shop you get fleeced.
Yeah globalization probably changes cultural celebrations a lot. Interesting perspective.
See It, Say It, Sorted
Never been to London, but I hope there’s a counter culture of subvertising that reclaims this as “film the police. Doxx the police. Convict the police.”
Yay, mob justice!
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Black Friday is an infohazard SCP
