"Stay away from the mall, say Hallelujah!"
May 2, 2006 1:44 AM   Subscribe

 
It's a hard concept to sell.
posted by pracowity at 3:36 AM on May 2, 2006


Why do they hate America China?
posted by rob511 at 3:41 AM on May 2, 2006


Man, one of the things that annoys me about Buy Nothing Day is the disconnect between idealism and practicality. For a majority of Americans, not buying anything on the day after Thanksgiving has to be weighed against the lack of free time in the holiday season and the sales that occur. If BND was held in, say, May, a lot more people would participate and the day would seem less like jerkoff activists trying to annoy people who are already harried and busy. Kind of like why doing Critical Mass during rush hour tends to engender more resentment than persuasion.
posted by klangklangston at 6:05 AM on May 2, 2006


I'll buy that.
posted by Floydd at 6:08 AM on May 2, 2006


These ideas are dangerous to our way of life in America, and should be suppressed lest they cause an economic panic. Our president told us what good patriotic Americans do when terrorists attack us, and that is to go shopping. To suggest elsewise is pure treason.
posted by beth at 6:25 AM on May 2, 2006


Anyone who goes shopping in the chaos and anarchy that is Black Friday - aka The Day After Thanksgiving in the U.S.A. - deserves what they get.
posted by unixrat at 6:37 AM on May 2, 2006


Of course Billy is pushing his books and CDs on his web site. I wonder if he takes orders on Buy Nothing Day.
posted by surferboy at 6:47 AM on May 2, 2006


not buying anything on the day after Thanksgiving has to be weighed against the lack of free time in the holiday season and the sales that occur.

If the holiday season is a bout buying stuff, then you'd have a point.

But last year wasn't the liberal plot to remove Jesus from the season? So how does Jesus as reason for season == buy stuff?

If BND was held in, say, May,

That is the whole idea of sacrifice. Sacrifice is someting Americans are not willing to do. Non-negotable way of life, a "war" with no calls of rationing, et la.
posted by rough ashlar at 7:20 AM on May 2, 2006


"If the holiday season is a bout buying stuff, then you'd have a point. "

Right, because gift giving ISN'T central to most American's conception of the holidays.

"That is the whole idea of sacrifice. Sacrifice is someting Americans are not willing to do. Non-negotable way of life, a "war" with no calls of rationing, et la."

That's the whole idea of over-reaching. Is it more important that BND be successful, or should BND be about giving activists a time to be self-important? And what the fuck are you even on about with the war? BND has nothing to do with that, aside from your conflation of sacrifice with rationing. Which is retarded.
posted by klangklangston at 7:38 AM on May 2, 2006


Rough Ashlar, we've been rationing civil liberties pretty aggressively, no? Especially if you're a dirty immigrant or foreign student. Now take off your shoes, belt, sweatshirt, keychain and bend over.
posted by zpousman at 7:50 AM on May 2, 2006


Stop shopping, even
Stop buying things

I'm kickin'
Yeah, I'm calm
Oh, I'm kickin'
Television
Television

Um..

posted by basicchannel at 8:12 AM on May 2, 2006


Well if you do stay away from the mall, at least you won't run into Kirk Cameron. So that's a plus.
posted by ninjew at 8:59 AM on May 2, 2006


I think the sentiment is overblown, but the timing is good. I see no particular reason why people shop on the day after Thanksgiving other than the number of sales and that it's a free day before the holiday season. The problem is that most of the stuff on sale is crap that'll be thrown out sooner rather than later and that it's needless consumption. To me, that's a reasonably good reason not to encourage consumption on that day.

Consumption is unstoppable. Whatever you do, you're going to end up with some level of shelter, food, and clothing. So why not buy things that you know will last, and buy no more than you need? The best gifts I've received are the ones I know I'll use -- clothing, housewares I'm lacking (I'm young so I still lack some reasonably kitchen tools), and membership to organizations. It's nice to occasionally get something that you wouldn't treat yourself to, but how much crap do you really need?

If Buy Nothing Day were in May, people would consume the same crap on a different day because the amount of stuff being shoveled into carts in a consumer-driven fury isn't nearly as high. I would prefer a reduced-consumption week: each day find something you use that can be replaced by a reusable good. Chuck out most of your paper towels and determine a schedule for washing resusable cloth towels. Put together a cooking schedule that lets you fix meals you can hold in reusable containers instead of using microwave dinners. All of these are going to end up making the amount of garbage you create that much less and, in the end, make you less dependent on wasteful resources.
posted by mikeh at 9:10 AM on May 2, 2006


I see no particular reason why people shop on the day after Thanksgiving other than the number of sales

That's no joke; if you're buying gifts for a large family and are short on cash, getting up early one day to fight the crowds at Wal-Mart doesn't look so bad. It seems toys especially are heavily discounted on Black Thursday, and I personally think little kids should get what they want on Christmas. They can become bitter anti-capitalists when they're old like us :-D
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 9:14 AM on May 2, 2006 [1 favorite]


So the retailers can not only tell you when to jump, but also how high? I'm sure it helps people get more of their gift shopping covered, but that's still gross.
posted by mikeh at 9:30 AM on May 2, 2006


We've been significantly downsizing our gift-giving, particularly for the kids (4 of them!) The stop-shopping materials have definitely influenced us, and our attitude seems to be spreading through our entire extended family. 7 years ago, they thought I was a loon for not shopping at WalMart. Now a few have totally sworn off the Bentonville Beast and others are confessing their mixed feelings about the place.

I wish some of the guests at my stepson's Bar Mitzvah had been anti-consumerist. The boy now has a video iPod, PSP, and 20 inch flat screen TV for his room. (When I was his age I had a transistor radio.) So we aren't sure what to give him. Maybe a donation to Seeds of Peace in his name!
posted by Biblio at 9:51 AM on May 2, 2006


For the kid who (seems to have) everything:

video iPod - iTunes credit
PSP - GameStop gift card
20 inch flat screen TV - XBox 360
posted by mischief at 10:00 AM on May 2, 2006


Anyone who goes shopping in the chaos and anarchy that is Black Friday - aka The Day After Thanksgiving in the U.S.A. - deserves what they get.

I don't buy a whole lot, but I sure as hell shop on black friday. On no other day do I get such good deals on computer hardware. While I support the reduction in our consumerism (i.e. I have eliminated just about all the unnecessary possessions in my life, most importantly television), I'm not going to pass up a chance to get what I do need at a great price. Each of the past 3 years, I've spent maybe $50 on black friday and gotten $150 worth of parts.
posted by knave at 10:09 AM on May 2, 2006


klangklangston, it's good to hear that I'm not the only one with this screaming inside my head every time one of my colleagues starts pushing BND or CM. We need to work on a workshop: Marketing for Activists.

Personally, it's buy nothing day for me 2-4 days out of the week, but if I'm a voracious consumerist as some Americans are depicted:

How am I supposed to adapt to this new buying pattern if its proponents place it in direct conflict with one of my entrenched rituals? The new product/idea will lose out. Give it to me in a more easy-to-use form. I'll try it then. Then after trying if for a while, I will investigate its benefits, and maybe use it more often.
posted by Extopalopaketle at 10:24 AM on May 2, 2006


My point isn't that consumerism is bad-or-good or black friday is good-or-bad, but that I don't see the symbolic gesture of not shopping one day as worth passing up a good deal.

It's reminiscent of the "don't buy gas one day" ploy, wherein people think they can force gas prices down by slightly altering their buying habits. They aren't willing to actually buy less gas overall, so it's doomed to fail.
posted by knave at 10:26 AM on May 2, 2006


About 12 years ago, I stopped buying Christmas presents except for small boxes of chocolates or cookies or some other goodies. I especially like those Russell Stovers boxes of chocolates for adults. Kids get Kinder eggs and such.

I don't wrap gifts, but put the boxes in those little gift bags that can be re-used.

The benefit to the recipient: a gift that won't get returned or collect dust, that most everyone appreciates and will use, and are not worried if it's a duplicate. Plus, a gift bag they can use again.

The benefit to me: a gift costing only about $5-7 (with a total Christmas shopping bill of less than about $150), no hassles trying to figure out what to get everyone, and my whole Christmas shopping can be done in a candy aisle in about 20 minutes.

The benefit to the environment: no copious packaging to throw away, reusable gift bags, no multiple trips wasting gas to find just the perfect gift. Voila!

Sometimes, like on birthdays, I'll give someone a nicer gift, like a gift cert for books, music or meals or something, but it's an exception to this general pattern. Mom also gets roses on her birthday and Mother's Day, of course, as well as any variety of other stuff through the year. But she's exceptional.

It's a pretty simple approach to gift giving. It takes a lot of the stress out of the holidays for me. People seem to like what they receive. And the simple, inexpensive gift takes the pressure off of others to get me something extravagant, too.

(And honestly, if someone wants a nice extravagant toy, they can save up and buy it themselves.)
posted by darkstar at 10:28 AM on May 2, 2006


Add me to the list of people whose families no longer exchange gifts at Christmas (for adults, anyway). Frankly there are a lot of us now, what with marriages and the like, and everyone got damn tired of having to make lists of what they wanted, and the hassle of having to be prodded to produce such a list (in time before the holiday, even), and the hassle of distributing all the lists, and conferring with everyone else as to who was getting what to avoid duplicates, and so on and so forth. Plus we all have enough money now to buy ourselves any goodies we want.

And when we get together for the holidays, we'd rather spend it sitting around talking and enjoying each others' company, and not running hither and thither to the nearest mall to fight the crowds.
posted by beth at 11:16 AM on May 2, 2006


How am I supposed to adapt to this new buying pattern if its proponents place it in direct conflict with one of my entrenched rituals?

I think that's part of the reason why he calls himself Reverend Billy. It's a church, repent now! Your entrenched rituals are sinful, or so he'd have you believe. Although that particular man has a background in theater, I think that his viewpoint is reasonably valid and indicative of the movement as a whole. People tend to pay more attention to so-called radical changes to their lifestyles. Few people eat slightly healthier, many go on "diets" and claim they're changing their lives.

If you're the guy getting a good deal on that one day while you've saved all your cash throughout the year, you're not the target of this. If, on the other hand, you're buying a second television because you can't quite see the living room one from the kitchen so you want one in there too, you might have issues. Or if you're going to Victoria's Secret for the third weekend in a row because there's a sale again. If you feel bad you can't participate on that particular day, you're probably not in the target demographic because you're already considering what you buy.
posted by mikeh at 11:26 AM on May 2, 2006


I have been staying away from the mall for years now, with the help of my friends at Amazon.com, Half.com, and eBay.com. In fact, the only time in the last 10 years that I went near the mall on Black Friday was to drop a few relatives (teenaged cousins) off at the mall and pick them up later.

Last year I did almost all of my gift buying from Amazon plus one trip to Barnes and Noble for something that otherwise wouldn't make it in time. Then again, books and cds are very welcomed in my family.
posted by msjen at 11:51 AM on May 2, 2006


Few people eat slightly healthier, many go on "diets" and claim they're changing their lives.

And the vast majority of them backslide. Gradual change is just about the only viable path to permanent personal change. Reverend Billy is mostly for entertainment value, like Adbusters or the Billboard Liberation Front. Maybe they get people thinking a little, best case scenario. They don't accomplish or even enable radical upheaval, and in the end that's not really their purpose.

The other thing that will change the world is undeniable suffering. The accomplishments of SDS, Tom Hayden, Abby Hoffman and the yippies, people who choose activism, are meaningless and insignificant compared to Rosa Parks or the stonewall rioters, people who had no other choice if they wanted to live like humans.

My god I'm pompous today.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 12:10 PM on May 2, 2006


Marketting for Activists would be such a good idea, but most activists become activists by being insufferable douchebags that don't care how they're perceived.
posted by klangklangston at 12:26 PM on May 2, 2006


I love Rev. Billy. We appeared alongside him in Culture Jam film a few years back. Last time he did his show in San Francisco, he canonized the Billboard Liberation Front, it was a great honor.
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 2:13 PM on May 2, 2006


Oh and PinkStainlessTail... fuck Adbusters. I hate being mentioned in the same sentence as those phonies, almost as much as some ignorant asswipe writing the BLF took it's cues from the Situationists, the biggest frauds of the 20th century.
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 2:17 PM on May 2, 2006


mikeh:

"Chuck out most of your paper towels and determine a schedule for washing resusable cloth towels."

Er... because towels, washing machines, detergent, and water are so cheap and environmentally friendly?
posted by parrot_person at 2:35 PM on May 2, 2006


I was waiting for someone to call me on that! It's a recursive process, really: if you're using a lot of paper towels, you're using more resources than the standard washing regimen. The next week you figure out what kind of detergent (if you need it) is more environmentally friendly. The week after that, you figure out how to more efficiently use water.

It's a game of degrees; I don't want to be the person who is using disposable materials for every activity I do with tons of packaging, but I also want my clothes fresh and don't want to have to use a washboard and borax. I think there's a reasonably responsible answer for the society at large, and there's a level of comfort for the individual.
posted by mikeh at 2:51 PM on May 2, 2006




About 12 years ago, I stopped buying Christmas presents except for small boxes of chocolates or cookies or some other goodies. I especially like those Russell Stovers boxes of chocolates for adults. Kids get Kinder eggs and such.

I don't wrap gifts, but put the boxes in those little gift bags that can be re-used.


The question becomes then, why buy anything at all? If it's a cheap gift for a cheap gift, then why not cut the matter out entirely?
posted by zabuni at 3:17 PM on May 2, 2006


Extopalopaketle writes "How am I supposed to adapt to this new buying pattern if its proponents place it in direct conflict with one of my entrenched rituals?"

Rituals are only important if they are meaningful.
posted by krinklyfig at 2:50 AM on May 3, 2006


"Rituals are only important if they are meaningful."

Much as I love Sartre, it's not just the individual who decides meaning.
posted by klangklangston at 5:18 AM on May 3, 2006


The question becomes then, why buy anything at all? If it's a cheap gift for a cheap gift, then why not cut the matter out entirely?

It's a good question. I think it's because lots of people want the best of what the holidays have to offer - the ritual, the festival, the social cohesion, the party, the time off, the little gesture by way of a small gift - but don't appreciate the way it's been so commercialized or the pressure to purchase that goes along with it.

I like to get a little gift from folks and to give something, too. It's nice! But I don't want folks to feel obligated to give me a gift that's some extravagant expense that's JUST the right thing that required them to go through the hassle that is holiday shopping. And I don't like feeling obligated to do the same when the obligation is chiefly stemming from businesses that just want me to spend my money so they can have a fat fourth quarter.

A little box o' chocolates, some homemade cookies or maybe a book from Amazon...those are about right. A nice gesture. A token of friendship, fellowship and kindness, without ostentation or pressure.

Christmas is so much more to me than the gift-giving, anyway. Heck, a sincere hug and an intimate conversation with a friend is worth far more than an iPod, imho. The iPod, I can buy for myself.
posted by darkstar at 6:25 AM on May 5, 2006


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