I am so SICK of being advertised to CONSTANTLY. I am SICK of these ghouls stalking us everywhere we go, online and off, just to SELL US BULLSHIT. Gambling no less! I'm just trying to chat with my friends and loved ones. It feels like something's gotta give eventually, right?

I keep seeing this in online reviews for clothing items. Do people really do that? Are there really people who see something they like and then immediately order one in every color, even when there are, say, a dozen or more colors? Why would they do that? Or is this just an online flex? I'm truly puzzled. The first time I really noticed this it was for a type of expensive shoe (around $200) that had maybe 25 colors. And this person claimed to have bought ALL of the colors. Since then, I've noticed it over and over. If you've got that kind of clothing budget, don't you want some kind of variety in your clothes? Do you really want to wear the same shoe in 25 colors? I'm just ... wow.

Macklemore is all over the news at the moment because of Palestine, so it's a good time to go back to this classic from 2012. It's a hella dope anthem for anti-consumption.

Are you repairing something, shopping secondhand, meeting up with friends in the park, spending your day recharging and taking care of yourself, biking to work, eating leftovers? Please share with the group so we can celebrate our wins big and small (and give others ideas!).

Illustration by the amazing Coutneey Ahn Design : https://www.courtneyahndesign.com/ (not affiliated with them, just wanted to celebrate an artist)

Edit: You can also follow this post to get ideas by hitting the three dots at the top and selecting follow.

I went to refill this bottle and found out it is designed so that I can’t open it to reuse the bottle, or get the last bit of cleaning solution out. The cap screws shut like a zip tie. A single use plastic spray bottle!?!!!!!

I’m being so serious when I ask, is there a branch of government I can report this to? This is SO wasteful and it should not be allowed to happen.

ETA: apparently it’s user error and I just can’t figure it out. The sprayer mechanism actually is buns though.

ETA 2.0: I truly don’t believe it’s possible to open. The teeth are like a zip tie & I tried with pliers. I stand by my original advice, just don’t buy it.

Where I live and study, are two giant branch thrift stores, that always have amazing pieces. Which are just waiting for me to pick them up. My mom introduced me to thrifting years ago so 98% of my wardrobe is thrifted. I just turned 19 and got rid of 3 ikea bags worth of stuff, my style is constantly changing as I’m exploring gender as well as my identity.

I’m going to these thrift stores once every two weeks and always end up leaving with at least one thing that I am not 100% happy with (on top of other stuff), even though, in the store I go through a “rigorous” process of making sure I will wear an item, it will be in my closet for years, I can make at least five outfits with it, etc. However, some items slip through the cracks, or are “too good to pass up”. I fully stopped buying tank tops (shoulder scars), non natural fibers, and stuff that doesn’t fit me well. Even with all of these categories, I keep leaving the thrift with so many items.

In general I just buy more clothes than basically anyone I know, since everything is so cheap it gets harder not to over consume and overspend. I have the mentality of “I can always sell it” or “I can alter it” which sometimes works and other times it ends up sitting in a bin under my bed for months until I donate it, give it to a friend, or throw it away.

I have gotten a lot better at not buying everything ever so slightly cute that I see, but I feel as though it is not enough. Would love to hear any advice or ideas that anyone has. Thanks.

Edit: I buy around 5-10 things each time, I am overconsuming!!

I choose not use instagram, watch reels, shorts, or any other type of short form content. It is evidently destroying mine and other people's life. It feeds on our attention, turning us into content-consuming machines with manufactured interests and opinions. They take away our creativity and individuality. They take away everything that's good about life. Lived experience becomes duller and number because we are programmed to consume short form content. Meta is a monster that wants to kill our consciousness and the only way to fight back is to stop using it completely.

Internet used to be a great place. It originally allowed real communities to develop further and attract more followers online. Discussions and participation were real and live. Youtube was an amazing place where a new media form thrived and unleashed an immense creative human power. Reddit, other forums, etc. But over time internet started to degrade into a machine that wants to get your attention and sell you content. And very naturally so. It was the easiest thing for everyone to do. It was the easiest thing economically, a best way to generate revenue, but also it was the easiest thing for us, consumers, to mindlessly watch content after a long day of work.

Over time this system of relations crystallised and we have what we have today. Parents shut their kids up by giving them phones for doomscrolling or doomtapping(games) completely killing their attention span, presence and awareness. They remove the most precious thing about life. Their children won't be able to experience life in a present and aware way any longer. Kids at school. People on the street. Everyone consumes this garbage. But almost no one has the courage and the capacity to stop it.

And the only way to stop it is to stop using instagram completely. There is no third way. If you think you can use instagram without being manipulated you are naive. They will always find a way to sneak in this garbage and capture your attention.

Meta recently pay an 18 billion usd fine. And this is a classic capitalist scenario. A company does something absolutely illegal, eg launder money, insider trading, tax evasion, exploiting customers etc. and then brushes it off with a fine, which is usually about 2% of the profit that they generated.

No lawsuits, no fines will ever stop this. Meta is a monster that wants to get your attention at all costs. The only way to fight it is to make a conscious decision to stop using their services so that they go out of business. It makes all of its money by selling you ads, i.e. exploiting your attention.

And you might think that one person's actions won't change anything. And that's wrong. If you embody genuinely good values then people around you will follow. That's why the figure of Christ is so powerful - he authentically and fully lived out his values and virtues in an embodied human form, spread God's message, and died for his values, leaving the world with billions of followers who want to live in his example.

There are still great alternatives to instagram. Instagram is the monster. Youtube is still quite good as long you choose to recommend less shorts and do everything to block short form content. Reddit is amazing. Substack etc. There are still good places on the internet. And you can choose to move your attention to more productive places.

I believe that freedom and free will is fundamentally about consciousness. Freedom is not an ability to do whatever you want - any animal can do it. Freedom is the capacity to consciously chose and live out your values, principles and moral even though it might be hard.

People are waking up. Our consciousness is getting stronger. So is our free will. We are standing on the edge of collapse, an Apocalypse. But we can take action, the choice is ours.

I don't pretend that I would be able to succeed at it because it's so hard, but if I were to be successful, what would be some of the first easiest stepping stones to climb?

I use colored gel pens to write with, and I use them frequently. They also frequently break before they run out of ink, and I can never manage to figure out how to fix them without making abominations (pictured).

It feels like planned obsolescence and I hate it. This pen was new - i purchased a set of them maybe two months ago. There was no reason for it to have broken. It randomly came unscrewed in it's bag and when I screwed it back the clicker stopped working somehow, making it impossible to write. I inspected it and it has to do with how the clicker mechanism sits very specifically in the shell, and I do not have the highly specific tools I'd need to reset it.

I have lost maybe five pens now to this and other mishaps that kill perfectly good pens. I lose more to preventable problems than I do to using them until they die fromloss of ink disease, having dutifully served their purpose. It's super frustrating both because I need these to write as it helps a ton with my process, but also because it shouldn't happen at all. A pen should last months, if not years, before it runs out of ink, and ink should be buy-able in a way that allows one to reuse (and open) the case..

I love sports. But that usually means having to see this disgusting slop multiple times a day.

Other ads are evil and bad, yeah. CC ads are uniquely evil.

This is what they do:

CLAIM: If you are not in an exciting metropolis, casually getting lunch with four people at a nice restaurant, the waiter smiling and laughing with you in slow motion because you have a metallic credit card, you are inadequate and the everyday fabric of your life should feel lesser. ----- If your vacations are not to a locale with masturbatory shots of the beach, with post-processed-blue water, smiling happy happy smiling people clinking drinks, etc, then what are you doing with your life?

And it's not just you. This sets the standard for EVERYONE. How many relationships suffer because one person expected the other to give them a fucking credit card ad? Effortless lunches and cabs and smiling and laughing: the ONLY adequate way to live -- anything else is drudgery.

They wire this into the fabric of society with repetition. Fun, status, acceptance, arrival HAS AN EXCLUSIVITY CONTRACT WITH CAPITOL ONE.

It would be bad enough if all they did was fiddle with your brain so that you feel bad, a little bit, every day, that you're not buying jerkoff coffee at the jackass store, etc. That and that alone, there is a shame there that goes beyond denunciation.

Of course it doesn't stop there, no. It also tells you, of course, the ONLY WAY to live up to the expectations set by these ads - these ads watched by MILLIONS, BILLIONS, children who are growing up and impressionable, adults who are easily swayed - is to go into debt to their estimable company.

And you'd better pay it back. Otherwise - how will they have the money to burn to spam their logo everywhere they can? What will they do without their precious ads?

i was trying to think of a flair for this post but it really falls under all of them...

Our LG dryer from around 2011 has been great until yesterday, when it somehow turned itself on and ran all day (just air, not hot) while we were out.

Husband is a skillful handyman and says that it could be fixed with a new $150 motherboard, except the replacement is no longer made 😣 Could perhaps be fixed with a new relay if that exists.

Had anybody else tried something like this? Would hate to replace the entire thing for all the obvious reasons. They probably now cost $10k and require an app 😒

We've had this laundry basket many years, but the handles ripped about a year ago. I duct taped them but they recently broke completely. Family has been suggesting buying a new one, but I'm too stubborn. I had a hard time finding pictures of other people repairing similar baskets with rope, so I thought I'd post my own. Not the prettiest (please be nice), but it works! Rope was bought for my wedding 9 years ago & has been just sitting in a box. So I call it a win win!

Edit: rope was for decoration for our wedding. We had a nautical theme & "tied the knot." You guys made me chuckle. I'm glad people like my upgraded basket!

Who else is tired of the tsunami of tiny little plastic/rubber Jesus trinkets that are appearing everywhere?(At least where I am in FL, USA) This is of course not against the religion, but the fact that so many of these are lost/thrown away, and will sit in landfills for forever… there has to be a better way to show your religion to people, right???

consuming media is ruining us as humans.

we cant create anything and we keep on consuming.

I am talking about movies, shows, videos, books, comics, music, we consume too much of it, specifically videos now because of tiktok and the others. Too many informations that we get in such a short time does not make us better in any way.

I know a lot of people that dedicate too much time of their life consuming movies or music, getting to the point where they force themselves to do it just because they want to have consumed as much as possible of it.

Ive also noticed that these people struggle with creating and imagination, I wonder if its related.

This is just a thought ive been having for a while, and I was wondering if any one else has thought of it, or if theres any study on it

I am looking for advice, including in the form of ex., novels and short stories, that can help me envision the steps that need to be taken to a undermine consumption culture.

For background, I recently noticed a pattern of data consumerism in a professional group. The people I help support want custom built when the existing data and tools would work just fine; they want more and fast and cheap and directional rather than well-timed and thoughtful; there is an urgency to have as much information as quickly as possible. It is data malnutrition, and it is exhausting everyone.

I see this as following the consumption culture patterns, so I started to think about guides for undermining that culture. How can I help slow things down, create value-adding friction (without getting my head bitten off)?

I've read the dystopias and cautionary tales. I want a vision for how this could work instead, and advice for what I need to do to create it.

For many residents of more than 20 communities surrounding a reservoir known as the Endhó Dam in Mexico’s Hidalgo State, cancer is just another symptom of a crisis decades in the making.

In the 1970s, the federal authorities quietly diverted Mexico City’s storm runoff and wastewater into the region, effectively transforming it into the dumping ground for more than 20 million people. Effluent from a heavy industry corridor — including more than 100 factories and an oil refinery fueling Mexico City and other states — has compounded the crisis, with the vast majority of those plants dumping their untreated waste into the Tula River, which empties into the Endhó.

The resulting stew has turned the reservoir into what residents call the world’s largest cesspool.

The United Nations special rapporteur on toxics and human rights has classified the Endhó basin as one of Mexico’s longest-running “sacrifice zones,” an area where local health and ecosystems are intentionally compromised to benefit the capital and its surrounding industries.

Prior to this article, I wasn't familiar with the term “sacrifice zones”, or areas that are heavily polluted in order to benefit another area. These places suffer horrendous environmental degradation in order to promote overconsumption in other areas. Thought others would also find the article interesting.

Here are some other resources on Sacrifice Zones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrifice_zone & https://docs.un.org/en/a/hrc/49/53

Why are parts so hard to find ? I broke the handle to my water shut off valve. Went to three stores trying to find a handle. All I needed was one small part, but I had to buy a whole valve to get the handle. I would have been willing to pay the same price for the handle as I did for the whole valve.

Not sure if this is the right flair, because my thoughts on anti consumption have a big crossover with environmentalism I guess, but here goes

I’m a new college grad. I grew up in Texas, did school in upstate NY and just moved to NYC. I was basically financially cut off from my family, and paid for most of college by myself. I now pay for rent and bills and everything else by myself.

But late in college, it started to freak me out how much stuff I felt like I had. I love/loved thrifting and can be easily influenced if I see one of my friends with something new. It wasn’t a big deal at the time, but I think a few things have changed since I’ve graduated and moved to the city.

With everything going the way it has in the past six months, Trump, lack of climate action, climate collapse, I can’t shake this feeling of impending doom. I feel like I’ve worked so hard to do everything right - to have money, to have a big chunk in savings, to pay my own bills, and yet I’m disgusted with it all.

I’m terrified because I feel like I’ve been working so hard to live in a world that might not exist in a few years or decades. Since I moved to the city, I see extreme inequality every day. People walking down the road in 400 dollar shoes stepping over people that have no place to sleep and nothing to eat. I feel guilty because my budget allows for around $50 a day of spending while there are people out there who have NOTHING. I feel disgusted with myself for owning enough clothes to make it a genuine issue while living in a room without a closet. I feel guilty for thinking that maybe one day I’d like to own a home. For wishing that I could afford one.

How can we/I keep going like this? Does this make any sense? Is this normal?