The cost of consumerism

Have you ever heard or seen an advertisement and thought, "Wow, that's supposed to make people want to buy this shit?" 

Or maybe your friend bought one of those Hoverboards (*cough* fancy skateboards *cough*) and you thought about how pointless those things are. 

But let's face the truth: we're all guilty of buying things we don't need. The video game console that just came out, those shoes on sale that are way too nice to leave in the store, the newest iPhone -- even if you haven't broken yours (yet). 

You might be thinking, So what? There's no harm in treating ourselves... Oh, but there is! And I, personally, am so guilty of it that it just started to concern me after reading a passage in the novel Feed. 

In Feed, 73 percent (Anderson 112) of people have the internet implanted in their brains. When it comes to buying things, they're like us. As soon as an outfit becomes a fashion trend, a toy gets really popular, or a certain car is everywhere, everybody wants it. Only it's even worse, because with the internet in their brain, they're constantly bombarded by advertising, and can purchase stuff wherever they are. 

The main character, Titus, meets a girl named Violet, who, along with her father, challenges the superficial norm. She understands the world differently than most people, since she didn't have a feed until age six, and had been taught -- she is home schooled by her father -- about the world's problems.

For a while, Titus and Violet date each other, but after a hacker messes with them and their friends' feeds, since the feed is connected to the entire body's basic functions and Violet got her lower-quality feed late, she slowly starts to die. 

As she's dying, Titus visits her, and he gets into an argument with Violet's father, who blames him for making Violet's final days miserable. In them, Violet sent Titus a list of things she wanted to do via the chat in the feed, but Titus deleted the list; he didn't do any of it with her the way she wanted to. What prompted him to behave in such dickish way, you ask? Well, Violet's father had this to say: 

"We Americans...are interested only in the consumption of our products. We have no interest in how they were produced, or what happens to them (he points at Violet here)... what happens to them once we discard them, once we throw them away" (Anderson 290). 

We're so obsessed with material items that we ignore what happens before products even reach us, and we don't care for what happens when we toss them in the trash. Much of the clothing we purchase is the result of child labor, and 21% of the volume in landfills is from wasted food -- which we spend $218 billion on. 

We can research where our clothes come from, and make an effort to waste less food by buying only what we need, or giving it to someone else -- but even while we know this -- myself cringingly included -- we continue to consume. It feels good to have stuff as long as we don't think about the bad things, so we don't; a lot of the time when Violet brings up the issues to Titus throughout the time that they're dating, he shuts her down or ignores her. And in the end, he doesn't spend time with her because she's dying -- she becomes garbage to him. 

It's really messed up. 

Biel, O. 

Word count: 581 

Sources: 

Feed, M. T. Anderson.