Tomorrow, November 27th, is Buy Nothing Day. People are encouraged to refrain from making any kind of transaction where money is exchanged for goods or services.

Yippee!

Another initiative designed to change humanity!
Just like, but not limited to: Gay Rights Day, Human Rights Day, International Women's Day, World Elder Abuse Awareness Day, Abuse Prevention Day, Ocean Day, Earth Day, World Day, Save Our Planet Day, Space Day, International Day of Peace, World Animal Day, World Food Day... and the list goes on! Every major cause, disease, and common sense action out there has its day! And these "Days" are conceived to raise our awareness about stuff we should already know and actions we should already be doing. You'd think the mass media would be the most obvious sources of dissemination to ensure that the population is getting the right facts and that everyone is up to date on reality, but no... We need to dedicate entire days to remind us that we shouldn't throw garbage in lakes and beat on elders or treat other races differently, etc... I ask you, what's wrong with this picture?

Apparently, we do need them, so I don't have any problems with these 'theme' days per se, but I do question just how effective and worthwhile these efforts really are in some contexts. For starters, the only people that wholeheartedly participate are the people who are already conscious of the problems and who generally do their share outside of such initiatives.

Other participants? Well, if those 'special' days do present a marketing angle that can be exploited for profit, someone will exploit it to the max. Unfortunately, this is usually in direct correlation with 'public interest' and the only true sign that an "awareness cause", such as Earth Day, has become a great success! And that's when the media truly begins to 'promote' them!

Have you heard anything on the corporate news sources about Buy Nothing Day? Probably not, which exemplifies what I was saying above, but also acts as another example of ineffective activism that doesn't seek proactive ways of using what's there. For one, independent thoughts don't have to be limited to 'indie' modes of far-from-far-reaching means of communications, but as with all else, it's a question of 'right time'.

The fact that organizers chose tomorrow as the Buy Nothing Day boggles the brain! How realistic is that??? As an event aimed at raising awareness, it's destined to fail and , if anything, have an immediate negative effect on consumers rather than a long term positive one. Tomorrow already has a label, it's referred to as Black Friday for a reason! The first Friday after Thanksgiving is the beginning of the traditional Christmas shopping season. The concept of "Traditional Christmas Shopping Season" freaks my mind, but I won't get into that right now.

Since not everyone is able to celebrate Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving Day, many will do it over the weekend. So People are receiving, others are visiting; people will buy gifts, and frozen peas and flour, and juice and wine and alcohol, and napkins and cardboard plates; and since they're on the move, they'll pay for gas and snacks and restaurants and magazines in airport lounges and in bus terminals; and since most people but retailers have the day off, they'll go to the movies with their kids and...

They know they shouldn't--if they somehow heard about this Buy Nothing initiative, right? and even if they did, people are far too busy to pay attention--but anyway, they couldn't shop the day before and only found out this morning that they needed eggs and baking soda and that Aunt Martha decided to come and she likes the canned cranberries... whatever the reason, people won't care, they'll buy, and because they have to justify it in the heat of all they have to do, they'll feel guilt (most probably unconsciously) rather than see it as an opportunity to reflect on the matter. And for those people that have given it some thought but decided to go to the store anyway, the crowd they'll inevitably find there means the subject is long since out of their heads. That guilt they felt leads to unreasoned negative feelings about a slogan, rather than positive, well-reasoned ones... Harder to walk into an empty store to buy something when you know you shouldn't. Guilt plays a role here as well, you say? But the lack of a crowd makes all the difference, allowing the guilt to be, in this case, productive, so that the person who choses to walk away without making a purchase, actually feels like s/he is contributing... Need I say more?

Organizers should have chosen a quieter moment in the year. Right now, Buy Nothing Day is simply an angry attack on consumerism rather than an opportunity to open up people's minds. And those kinds of things tend to be counterproductive.

A plain ol' regular Monday when stores and such tend to be less active... during a period when humans are more relaxed and open, in a way that doesn't go against the natural laws of humanity; that's the kind of day--one that self-promotes itself in no time--that should have been chosen for this initiative. Seems like a no-brainer...

We humans are funny! Never mind the follies of the stock market... just look at the Multi Level Marketing (MLM) schemes plaguing the Internet... Yeah, run off from my last post. Oh well.

What's the difference between MLM's and pyramid-schemes? As far as I can tell, calling 'em MLM's is just the lazy morons' attempt at shedding negative connotations akin to calling a turd a Wonderbar. The jargon may have changed, but the principle is the same...

And if you've ever been tempted to read the email and clicked on the link that brought you to their splashpage (which more often than not is also the 'click here to unsubscribe' link) you soon realized that the wonderful income opportunity they're selling is the exact template they've sent you, so you can sell it to others... Work, all from the comfort of your home, with just a few clicks per day.
The Internet is a strange and mystifying world to many folks, which makes it easier for them to believe in this form of virtual "marketing" than if they actually envisioned themselves doing the real-world version of what Internet MLM proposes... Nobody expects to make money by making tons of photocopies for an advert that promises to make people rich if they pay you for your ad so they can also photocopy it and sell it door to door, at work, by posting it on public billboards, advertising it on buses, or by stuffing it in people's hands no matter how many times they've said no, or even by strapping them down and taping their eyes open to make sure they read your advert - whatever it takes, and money will trickle up!
Not only is that too much work, but the thought of making money that way is totally absurd!!! and yet... electronically, in cyber space...

And so, a good portion of Internet users are cross-spamming each other!
Give humans a wonderful opportunity to network, and porn and spam and spam-like content-less sites is what makes up the majority of it in no time!

The Internet's accessibility, reach (real and imagined), and the anonymity it affords has given birth to yet a new kind of absolutely futile form of business where nothing real is created or produced or manufactured, exchanged or traded or offered. People are blindly transferring money for nothing but bits and bytes that promise yet another form of false hope that's easier to swallow as faith than the odds on the lottery. And in the end, yet again, only a handful are getting really rich out of it.

That we are sold and buy so easily into the rags-to-riches-in-just-one-hour-per-day idea is one thing...

That people are willing to take advantage of this--what points to a general sense of despair--is another...

The second is definitely a circular, chicken-or-egg type of conundrum. Think about it.

The Internet and MLM's: The American Dream, blown to Global Village proportions. But with one improvement! if you fail, it's not your fault, the people below you are responsible; they just weren't doing their share so you could reach your dream.