Disgusting Acts of Consumption
Hmmm…that title sounds like something you’d see on Rotten.com or some such place. (No, don’t go there to see why.) I’m not talking about anything graphically reprehensible or egregious, but rather, the whole Christmas holiday hoo-ha.
As a kid, I always wondered why adults could be so scroogy—you know, bitching about Christmas and how much it sucks, how disturbing it is that there could be so much focus on money and material things and all that rot. Because as kids, we don’t concern ourselves with that sort of stuff. Nowadays, I understand exactly what all those complaints are about. Take this excerpt from today’s news, for example:
A woman who was trampled by Wal-Mart shoppers during a holiday sale on DVD players has made numerous injury claims against stores, including nine against the world’s largest retailer.
Patricia VanLester was first in line to grab a $29 DVD player Nov. 28 and was knocked to the ground by a frenzy of shoppers. Paramedics found VanLester unconscious on top of a DVD player.
Can there be any excuse for this kind of crap? Granted, as you read more of the article, it seems as though this VanLester individual has had more than her fair share of injury claims against large store chains, almost to the point of it being really just ridiculous (I mean, the woman claimed “permanent disfigurement” after slipping on a puddle of hand lotion at Walgreens. Come on). But the facts of the matter are that she was trampled at Wal-Mart (the cesspool of American discount stores, in my opinion), and for what? A $29 DVD player.
What’s disgusting to me is that some people place the value of saving a few bucks SO FAR ABOVE anything else—including other peoples’ lives, apparently—that they will stop at nothing to achieve those savings. Witness the clinically insane amounts of people waiting in line at 5 a.m. outside your local Best Buy the day after Thanksgiving. Witness the plotting, map-drawing, scheming, memorization of part numbers, and God knows what else that these liner-uppers go through the night before their consumption rampage. My question is, can any of it possibly be worth this? So you might get a shitty product (that the store wanted to get rid of anyway) for a really good price. But did you really need that stuff? Were you buying it for someone? Even for yourself? Or were you just buying it because it’s cheap?
People who scavenge at every opportunity to save a buck absolutely make me sick. This is a personal pet peeve of mine. Rather than spend $39.99 on something, they waste days or even weeks scouring eBay, bidding at the last second, or driving miles and miles out of their way to buy that same thing for $38.69. What compels people to do this? Why does that extra dollar-thirty matter so much? Why do people feel justified in pushing, shoving, kicking, fighting, or trampling on other people to get what is probably the world’s shittiest DVD player for $29? Has little Johnny threatened to rip his own nipples off if he doesn’t get to watch Finding Nemo on a new DVD player for Christmas? And if so, shouldn’t little Johnny be taken to see a psychiatrist rather than being taught the lesson that threats of physical violence can always get you what you want?
Okay, I’m done. I just wanted to get that out there.
Edit 12/18/2003: Apparently, this news story I wasted twenty minutes ranting about is totally and completely made-up! That’s right—it never happened. Feh.
Categorized as Headlines