You’re going to want to cut up your Starbucks gold member card after this one
I’m guessing by now you’ve probably learned about the dangers of capitalism, as I myself learned about briefly when I momentarily stopped online shopping at Urban Outfitters in class to listen to what my professor actually had to say. This recent education probably sent you down a spiral of confusion and conflict in which you realized you’ve been a conspicuous consumer your entire life. The solution to this? Stop contributing to this pattern of blatant exploitation and give up on your favorite establishments because they gave up on you a long time ago. So without further ado, I bring you the hardest establishments to give up after you’ve decided you’re anti-establishment.
The first establishment that I urge you to veer away from (as hard as it may be) is reusable water bottles. Most common folk might try to tell you that they are helping the environment with these products, failing to recognize that their Hydroflask or Nalgene is simply another brand that they’ve been coerced into supporting under the false pretenses of “helping the environment.” Please, if they wanted to help the environment they would be drinking out of a bowl that they made from earth clay.
It’s recently become a lot easier to forget your attachment to your Apple products being that they’ve already begun to slowly self-destruct. My thoughts? Tim Cook is actually on our side and is so disgusted by Apple that he has decided to sabotage the company from the inside in the name of liberating us from our devices.
Here’s something they don’t tell you (who’s “they?” I don’t know): Flavored coffee drinks were invented for the sole purpose of taking your money. I know, crazy right? And I will let you in on a little secret — it’s even worse at those small independent coffee shops that charge more because they aren’t owned by a corporation and sometimes even support fair trade (what’s an establishment again?). So honestly just keep doing what you’re doing and blow thousands of dollars a year on Starbucks, because at least your vanilla latte will get you through your day.
It’s hard to be conscious and aware when everything around you is just a different type of product placement ad from some corporation that’s too large for you to even understand how much they own. So the best you can do is say no to the things that are probably the best for you and give into this rampant consumerist culture.
Written by: Rosie Schwarz — rschwarz@ucdavis.edu
(This article is humor and/or satire, and its content is purely fictional. The story and the names of “sources” are fictionalized.)
