I keep hearing about this stupid thing called a “Buy Nothing Day” and I’ve been super into activism recently, so I thought I’d take one for the team and talk about just how terrible it is! I mean first of all, ok, our glorious modern age can only be described as one of luxury and fulfillment. Now more than ever, we find ourselves with the freedom to indulge in whatever we like and enjoy ourselves to the fullest! One of the best ways our society has come to express this freedom is, of course, through consumerism. Though commonly carrying a negative connotation, consumerism not only keeps our society afloat through its economic support but also by supporting the people! The cruel enforcement of a day without buying is completely more environmentally and ethically burdening than the consumerism that doesn’t even affect anyone negatively. Just don’t research Shein’s child labor. Or the freakish polar bears.
Anyways, our society’s backbone is consumerism; to ask an entire society to pause their shopping for a whole entire day is like asking us to “look up from our phones once in a while”. A “detox” from “excessive consumption”, they say. It’s entirely unreasonable! Why develop and grow as a society if you’re not allowed to engage in activities you like? Isn’t that what we develop society for? Is that not why we work hard to better our economies and our own financial state? To feel comfortable? Anything that is done in excess can be unhealthy, yes. But how can it possibly be said that I “don’t need” every Rare Beauty lip gloss? You can’t possibly expect me to use pink GLITTER with a flannel shirt, can you? Might as well take away my oxygen, at least then I won’t be dying of embarrassment for matching my Prada shoes with a Chanel handbag instead of the Gucci one that just came out! Ugh, the horror!
Besides, what if something important is happening that day! Like, uh, what if someone got hurt and we really needed to go buy Hello Kitty Band-Aids? Does it sound ETHICAL to you to deny that purchase? Or what about a birthday, or, uh, a last-minute soiree! A lot of people are born in November, you know. It is imperative that we always have at our fingertips the means to obtain anything we want. Gratification sounds kind of like great! Is it so bad to demand haste from every costing whim? I paid for it, I should get it NOW. You could argue that all this stuff will end up in a landfill someday, which might be true, but even if it does, then I’m still helping the environment anyways. Beavers build dams all the time so what’s the difference between that and my clothes and plastic straws choking the turtles and covering the beaches? If I hadn’t done it, then someone else would have, like the Once-ler said (who, by the way, is always so villainized). Thneeds are soooo in! And even if that were to possibly not be super helpful for the environment, it doesn’t matter because we’re all going to die anyways! I pinky promise it’s ok that we’ve contributed to the extinction of hundreds if not thousands of animal species and probably more to come! We’re enjoying ourselves, that’s what the Earth is for. And even a one day pause in that enjoyment is far too long and completely harmful to the mental health of the people. Did you even think about that? Our mental health? I bet not.
Also, Buy Nothing Day is on Black Friday! I mean, did the inventors (or whatever) have any idea what they were doing when they made that clearly unresearched choice? It’s a day of SAVINGS, people! How dare they try to deprive us of that. How dare they. Honestly, it’s like they want us to spend more money. I wonder if they’ve even thought of all the poor people who need Black Friday sales because they’re affected by the rising prices caused by inflated perception of what people can afford…oh wait. Scratch that out later.
You can’t create a society based on consumerism and then try to take that away just because! Our need for instantaneous gratification is something the world can handle and it’s already doing a great job. I mean yeah, climate change will cause more than a third of the Earth's animal and plant species to face extinction by 2050, and 70% by the end of the century, but that’s already longer than we thought we were gonna make it and 75 years from now is like, suchhh a long time. Also, polar bear fur makes a great coat. Even when they’re emaciated and lowkey all dirty. Nothing Tide can’t fix! Surely we’ll have a better solution by then than asking us to stop the cause of it, like can you imagine? It’s not greed, ok, it’s greatness.