Black Friday Bullshit
it’s probably too late to mention this, but you sure as shit should not have black friday shopped today. this is not a post about family life or consumerism, or any of that other buisness. this is about you. family is important, and yes, people probably do spend too much time and money on possessions, but that isnt what this is about. its not for me to tell you how you should feel about your possessions. im telling you not to black friday shop because thats exactly what those assholes want you to do. while you are sitting out in the cold corporations are making inordinate amounts of money that guess what- they wouldnt even dream of sharing with say the morose motherfucker in the red target shirt standing outside in the cold missing thanksgiving dinner with their family to make sure that you dont steal or trample one another to death. your playing right into their hands with this shit. the very principle of the idea is absurd because truth be told you dont need whatever it is that you are buying, and chances are you probably cant afford it at a reduced rate either. im not trying to tell you how to spend your money, though i might be so bold as to suggest who you spend it with. because with each dollar that you spend you are casting a vote. buy your nikes and you are saying yes to slave wages. shop at walmart and you are funding renovations to the twenty million dollar bomb shelter the walton family owns. and yes that shit is real. some folks dont have a home, they have a fucking bomb shelter mansion. you can preach capitalism all you want and paste this article all up and down your facebook page calling me a liberal asshole, but theres no way in hell you can say that this is what an ideal world looks like. im not saying dont shop at walmart, i myself do from time to time. its affordable and on occasion it is the only option, but dont do it thanksgiving night. the walton family sure as shit wouldnt.
thanks for reading for what is sure to be your last time visiting my blog,
paul durante
think im a liberal asshole? tell me on twitter @DewmontPaul
Posted on November 28, 2014, in Uncategorized and tagged black friday, opinion, Paul Durante, Thanksgiving. Bookmark the permalink. 3 Comments.
dailydewmontnews 
A lot of strong opinion there. You do the thing where you pretend to offer people a choice and then criticise all options except yours to such extent that readers don’t actually get any choice after all. Having said that, your logic is sound.
I agree, it’s a dumb idea to buy things we don’t need. But not shopping during a sales day to prove some point is not going to work. What’s going to happen in the real world is that a fraction of the people will stay out of it, while the rest will continue to buy discount shit just cause it’s cheaper. We are humans and humans like the idea of profit, this is why we all like being rich and if we aren’t rich, we like pretending that we don’t want money just to feel better. It’s human nature to want. You cannot fight it.
Sure, a lot of massive companies will make a lot of money. Global companies that operate on a massive scale and don’t care about each separate worker. But can you blame them? Founders of these companies, spotted the patterns in the system and followed them. They did this for themselves, to live comfortably and to not worry about going hungry. They have things like black friday, to make more money, and live even more comfortably. Seems ok if you ask me, people trying to improve their life. Just like everyone else. But for some reason we seem to believe that they owe us something. They don’t any more than we owe them to buy discount goods.
Although I agree with your arguments, I don’t expect the same thing from large companies. These companies make the money for themselves, they do it using their rules. Rules that work. If workers do not feel happy about those rules, then they should leave. The company can optionally try and make the workers happy, but they don’t have to. Why would they if there is nothing in it for them? There is no such thing as a selfless act. Once again human nature screws us over. Having said that it is very nice if a big company helps someone out. But even those companies are still doing it for themselves, it’s all about brand image. The human places it self over others, that’s how it survived in the wild. There are exceptions such as a mother will instinctively protect her child. Unfortunately these exceptions don’t apply to most of the world and so we can safely assume that on the business level, if someone does something, they are doing it for profit.
Secondly, a lot of small businesses will also make a lot of money during black fridays. We are talking here about people, who possibly are poorer than most and are simply trying to get by in life, just like the rich giants. My point is that everyone is going in the same direction, but we like to pretend that we are different because it makes it easier to accept the fact that some of the giants are doing it better than us. We think this because of the media, all the rich always smile so we assume that they are happy.. In reality people have just the same amount of problems no matter what they have. The more problems you get rid of the more problems you create. So really, the giants aren’t getting by any better than us (that’s why so many OD).
Jealousy of such giants, will get you no where. You can’t fight it, and if you can’t fight it, join it.
The system is far from perfect, but it works. We could all go communist this very second, we could kill all those rich people and try and build the perfect system. Sure some things would be better, but some would be worse, and that system wouldn’t be perfect either. After a few years we would start complaining again as we realise that there are still things to worry about.
I recommend you read a book called 1984 by George Orwell. I’ll finish this comment with a quote from that masterpiece. It quite on topic:
“He loved big brother”
I appreciate your commenting enthusiam mate, especially given that its about four times longer than my post, but to address your first point, of course I wrote it in a way that made my idea the only logical option. It’s a blog, why would i don anything other than that? You did it yourself by concluding that I am jealous of large companies. I’m not. People like to point to jealousy as the only source of animosity in life to simplify human strife and deter efforts at change. To say that I am jealous puts the fault on me, and ignores global financial inequality. As it stands I myself am not affected by this inequality- i have far more in life than I need. This is about the world in general, not me. My point is that if the global conscience is willing to disregard the least of us on matters as simple as shoes and big screen tvs they’re irrevocably fucked when a real issue is presented. But then we all already know that, even though we like to pretend that we dont. But I can accept that you condone capitalism-I myself am also not strictly apposed to it. But it seems foolish to maintain that it is a sustainable system. That is to say it nurtures only a very small fraction of the global population. When I sat down to write this I wasn’t looking to compose a piece of polished scholarship my friend, I was venting. But I appreciate your readership all the same and yes, 1984 is a good book, though in no way does it dictate was is or is not true about todays world. Thanks for reading,
Paul Durante
You make a good point. I apologise if I insulted you with the jealousy thing. I did not mean it to be taken personally I was only implying that in general, we often forget that the people who run the big companies are just the same as us. We then proceed to assume that they are in some ways better than us and we begin to have a problem with that.
I am not capitalist. Far from it. I was not attempting to criticise your views, only to try and introduce another way of looking at this issue. If I must say, I believe that we should follow a system that tries to be half socialist and half capitalist, in which we let the rich be rich by not taking much from them. That way everyone can at least be a little happy.
As for your point, I agree fully. We have grown very materialistic and it would be stupid of me to say that there is nothing bad about this. By this shallow materialism we become controllable by people in power, and we cease to have qualities that in the past would be considered human. People are choosing possessions over humans. However it must be said, although this system sticks of corruption, shallowness and blind following the crowd, it does stimulate the economy and development in ways we have never seen before. The question to ask here is which is more important. That question however is a lot more difficult to answer. Do we want blind and shallow development? Or do we let our origins hold us back?
Yes, I definitely agree with you on this.
The relevance of 1984 to your post is that Orwell develops both sides of the arguments, first he introduces to us the idea of love and feelings taking control over our lives and then he describes automation and degradation of human values trying to win us back. At least that’s what I got out of it. Many people have their own interpretation.
Either way,
Great post