Comments on: Comments on 4332

Post number 4332

snakey — Fri, 17 Nov 2000 10:03:07 -0800

Buy Nothing Day is November 24th. What do you think? Is this the right way to protest overconsumption?

By: snakey

snakey — Fri, 17 Nov 2000 10:16:39 -0800

Personally, I think that protesting overconsumption on the busiest shopping day of the year can only be a symbolic gesture. Choosing another day might be more effective.

By: owillis

owillis — Fri, 17 Nov 2000 10:19:45 -0800

I would do it, but I have to be at the mall early for the sales...

By: john

john — Fri, 17 Nov 2000 10:26:39 -0800

Sounds like it will do as good as the great gas out. We are too in love with shopping.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Fri, 17 Nov 2000 10:35:08 -0800

Baby steps. This year, it's simply not shopping on Nov 24. Next year, you avoid shopping and you slash out the tires of at least one neighbor that was planning on shopping. Year after that, we begin beating up popular mainstays of holiday shopping (CEO of hickory farms, whoever started the Foot Locker, Mrs. Fields, William H. Macy (to send a message to the Macy's chain), that woman from the Old Navy commercials...).

By: Byun-o-matic

Byun-o-matic — Fri, 17 Nov 2000 10:39:26 -0800

It's just crazy enough to work! Seriously, though -- wouldn't that day actually be a pretty good day to pull a stunt like this? I say this because "the busiest shopping day of the year" is always news material, and it's one of the few days I can think of where the level of consumer sales in one day is actually kept track of and reported on in the media. So if enough people participated in this to make even a moderate dent in the numbers, might it have more impact than if they chose some random day in June?

By: snakey

snakey — Fri, 17 Nov 2000 10:43:09 -0800

It might -- but I don't think it would be reported as a protest, unless people picketed. Instead, it would simply be seen as a slower than usual day after Thanksgiving, and a harbinger of a slow christmas season.

By: jaz

jaz — Fri, 17 Nov 2000 10:45:25 -0800

Hasn't the country got enought to worry about right now? The last thing we need is to have the media hyping up the nation's plummeting economy due to a lack of holiday retail trade.

By: john

john — Fri, 17 Nov 2000 10:47:40 -0800

Let's do something different and vow to never shop at a certain store again. Contenders being GAP or OLD NAVY. For giving us bad commercials and sweatshop clothes. We can put one bad business out at a time. WALMART might be a good one as well, but I think they have brain washed too many people.

By: netbros

netbros — Fri, 17 Nov 2000 10:55:58 -0800

I have never shopped the day after Thanksgiving. Did the media care? Did reporters come to my home to ask me why I wasn't shopping? Did Sears send any coupons to try to get me to come this year? Nyet.

By: gluechunk

gluechunk — Fri, 17 Nov 2000 11:36:36 -0800

More effective: Steal Something Day

By: Doug

Doug — Fri, 17 Nov 2000 12:03:36 -0800

I think if consumers would take one day a year and not shop it would send a pretty powerful message to retailers. It could demonstrate that the consumers are able to drastically effect the fate of these corporations through organized action. Or unaction, really. But most people are more concerned with having a new palm pilot or whatnot than actually reforming Americas pattern of consumption.

By: palegirl

palegirl — Fri, 17 Nov 2000 12:20:13 -0800

my friend alison and i saw this adbusters thing about a week ago and, since she's spending thanksgiving at my house, we were discussing what we could do. my fav idea is to get a couple more people and have me and some friends set up a card table or booth promoting buy nothing day with fliers and stuff and then alison could have a protest protest posse encouraging people to shop, handing out five dollar bills and getting into shouting matches wiht us.

By: grimmelm

grimmelm — Fri, 17 Nov 2000 12:25:15 -0800

I fear the time when one could fight the market by ignoring it has long since passed. Not showing up at stores on the 24th will be all-but-unnoticable. We need more highly visible anti-shopping acts.

By: rebeccablood

rebeccablood — Fri, 17 Nov 2000 12:35:32 -0800

couldn't we all just think through each of our purchases every day, spending our money only on things that truly *will* enhance our quality of life in a way that aligns with our values, and simply not buying those things that are unnecessary or that we know to be exploitive of people and/or the environment? marketing is intensely powerful, but if we all rendered ourselves more immune to it by approaching every purchase in a thoughtful manner, rejecting wholesale consumerism, it really would cease to exist as the powerful force it now is. I guess that would be far too radical an approach. rcb

By: milnak

milnak — Fri, 17 Nov 2000 12:38:04 -0800

I went to the store to get a "Happy Buy Nothing Day" card for my wife, but they didn't have any. Do you know if Hallmark is currently selling these?

By: hijinx

hijinx — Fri, 17 Nov 2000 12:49:07 -0800

palegirl's idea is a sound one, but I think it'd be better to sell your Buy Nothing Day merchandise. Ah, cruel irony and sarcasm!

By: Mars Saxman

Mars Saxman — Fri, 17 Nov 2000 13:40:22 -0800

That the day after Thanksgiving is still a massive shopping day surprises me, given that everyone knows it's a massive shopping day. Do consumerites have some kind of blocking mechanism which allows them to ignore the congealed traffic, the exhaust stench, the crowds of cranky, angry people, the pushing and shoving, the background roar of overexcited chatter, the inability to find anything you actually want unless you arrive before dawn? How do they stand it? Why don't they take the known fact that it is going to be the worst time of year to be in a mall as a signal to STAY HOME? Or do they actually like it? -Mars

By: Doug

Doug — Fri, 17 Nov 2000 13:47:02 -0800

Mars, Sales and a day off. A powerful combination.

By: Su

Su — Fri, 17 Nov 2000 14:06:37 -0800

So do we also have our gas, electricity and water turned off for this day? How far can this be extended? Your bank is using your savings in order to buy stuff to make money for themselves. Interest if your cut of what they make. Bah.

By: kindall

kindall — Fri, 17 Nov 2000 14:27:16 -0800

With so many people planning not to buy anything November 24, it's up to the rest of us to make up the difference. Come on, folks, America is counting on you! Ready! Set! Consume!

By: john

john — Fri, 17 Nov 2000 14:43:18 -0800

This may just be a scam so someone doesn't have to wait in long lines that day.

By: Byun-o-matic

Byun-o-matic — Fri, 17 Nov 2000 15:04:01 -0800

I want to rage against overconsumption, but I'm surrounded by shiny gadgets that belie my so-called convictions. It's like being a vegan butcher.

By: Skot

Skot — Fri, 17 Nov 2000 15:13:45 -0800

Hey, I want in on some of that vegan butcher action. Vegans make for very tender, corn-fed steaks.

By: thirteen

thirteen — Fri, 17 Nov 2000 15:23:50 -0800

There were people passing out fliers at this years halloween Red Moon Festival urging people to dress up like zombies and wander down State Street the day after Thanksgiving here in Chicago. I did not save the paper, but I recall it is not aligned with any cause, just performance art. I would love to see hundreds of zombies walking down the sidewalk(not the street, cause that would be wrong).

By: parvati

parvati — Fri, 17 Nov 2000 15:32:01 -0800

Overconsumption? What, would you all rather we didn't have a market economy? I know! Lets ask the government to give us everything we need! Then we'll never have to buy anything again. Yay! None of those pesky choices...Where's Mao when you need him?

By: grimmelm

grimmelm — Fri, 17 Nov 2000 16:17:52 -0800

The problem with, okay, a problem with living in a society so ridiculously defined by market interactions is that it gets harder and harder to make a statement in any terms except those the market understands. Buy Nothing day is trying to make a statement about a cultural problem, one that is intimately intertwined with our relationship to the market. And what's the response? Not buying stuff: a market action gussied up with some symbolism sure, but still an action couched in the language of the market. Approaching event horizon.

By: holgate

holgate — Sun, 19 Nov 2000 00:28:20 -0800

Don't even think of it as a protest, but rather as a kind of personal meditation. Just like TV Turn-Off Day, it lets you consider the role played by the act of buying in your daily life: the way in which it becomes as instinctive as lighting a cigarette when you're a 40-a-dayer. The first "statements" aren't to the world, but to yourself.