Oh, Salon. Must you too fuel our overconsumption?
Salon has introduced a new column called Object Lust. In it, writers and readers pimp stuff they like. This week it's Katharine Mieszkowski gushing about a pedometer. There's a link to the product website. This disgusts me.
Salon introduces the column not by saying "here's stuff you can buy, and we're pimping it," but by saying "oh, even you self-righteous simple-living types lust after stuff, let's all admit it in a literary and enlightened fashion":
No matter how far above the material world we float -- never mind how emotionally and spiritually tuned in we may fancy ourselves -- somewhere deep inside, we all love stuff. Even those who crow about being able to fit the contents of their lives into their Volkswagen eventually develop an intense connection with the Volkswagen itself.
Our prized possession might be a special brand of toilet paper or those Mr. Clean sponges that wipe every stain imaginable off the walls while creepily disintegrating into chalky paste in your hand. It could be the razor that leaves no nicks, the garlic crusher that cleanly mashes clove after clove, the takeout service that delivers fresh organic produce to your door, or the bra that shapes us beautifully.
Thus, we're launching a new weekly column called Object Lust.
Salon, salon. Sure, we all want stuff. Could it be because it's always being pimped to us, even in places we don't want or need it to be? Why encourage us in our pathetic obsessions with our crap? Or, if we have to talk about our crap, why not about crap that can't be bought? Crap we made. Crap we picked up on the street. Crap our grandparents brought from the old country that we can't get rid of now, even though it's crap. Broken phones we insist on saving. Or what about a column on crap we have and hate. Or stupidest purchases of crap ever.
If I want to know about stuff I could buy and why someone else has an idiotic obsession with it, there are about fifteen thousand magazines I can look at. Why do I have to see that in Salon?
posted by AmyN @ 5/18/2005 12:18:00 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Truly disgusting. The feature will probably be a smashing success. In addition to the pimping part, there's also the cheap voyeurism: "You are what you own" is hardly a taxing formula.
First of all you seem to miss the point. It's not about "crap"; it's about not crap. It could be that you consider everything crap -- anything with a price tag is, to you, a consumerist indulgence. But I doubt this is the case. I'm sure there are items and services in this world that, if you thought about it, you'd realize you couldn't live without. For example the computer on which from which you're publishing this blog. Or Blogger, the blog software you use. Or your car. Or your bicycle. Or the digital camera you have, or wish you had, so that you may post a picture on this blog.
What I'm saying is that you think that there can be nothing amazing and life-changing about stuff, but if I took all your stuff away you'd likely feel bereft. And the feeling would be justifed, and right. There's nothing wrong with liking things. And what's wrong with loving something so much you want to scream its name from rooftops?
Farhad:
Of course there is 'not crap'. (Blogger, unfortunately, not falling into that category. That I use it is more an indication of laziness than love. Computer, yes, it ain't crap. I have been known, even, to wax poetic about it, but usually only when people ask for my computer-purchasing advice.)
But there's a whole universe out there pimping things, both crap and not-crap. There are very good sites devoted to calling my attention to products I might be interested in. For example: Cool Tools. Why should Salon add to the chatter about stuff I might want? That's not why I read Salon.
Now, maybe Salon has every intention of publishing paeans to not-crap that cannot be purchased and has no link to a product web site. But the very first object profiled is quite purchaseable, and there is a link to the product's site, and that's not a very auspicious start.
As for your assertion that you are "sure there are items and services in this world that, if you thought about it, you'd realize you couldn't live without", I think exactly the opposite is true. Indeed, it's when we're not really thinking about it that we say things like "Oh, I really couldn't live without my X." When I really think about it, there are very few things I couldn't live without. I might not like living without them. I might not live very happily without them. But I would live. If you honestly believe otherwise about yourself, I feel quite sorry for you.
Of course I have obsessions about things. I lust. I become attached. But I try not to compound the idiocy of my attachment to self-righteous justification of my idiotic attachment. Desire and attachment are just what humans do. Would I feel bereft if you took away all my stuff? Yep. Does that mean that stuff is amazing and lifechanging? Um, no. It means that humans hate having stuff taken away from them.
I am trying, and of course I fail quite a lot of the time, to simply let my lust for objects be. That I fail is no excuse for elevating my failure to a virtue. There may be nothing wrong with liking things, but an unhealthy attachment to stuff, and more stuff, and other people's stuff, and stuff you read about on the internets, is not something to be cultivated. Especially by one of the few remaining decent news sources.
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