There's a bit of a stoush in Sydney at the moment. Barry O'Farrell, a man in no position to issue proclamations along such lines, has branded the City of Sydney's support of Buy Nothing New Day as "nuts". Retailers in the CBD are making noises about rates strikes. The commentariat are split, predictably, on what all this means. It's all, apparently, quite controversial. Lefties don't know where to put their faces. The right-wing are all too decided on where their faces ought to be, and that's right in the public eye, which as a result is full of spittle.
For my part, I'm decided.
You see, there are few things more guaranteed to strip the enamel from my teeth than retail.
Retail, for me, is all that is wrong about the world.
Retail, for its part, wants me to shut up and shop. It cares not a jot for my opinions. It cares only for my wallet, and the mechanics of emptying it. This it means to achieve, apparently, through the strategic use of so-called "retail spaces".
These spaces seem to consist, in the main, of thousands of near-identical, cheaply manufactured products, augmented with hundreds of oversize hoardings filled with dead-eyed teenagers sullenly slouching about in this week's latest sewn-by-a-third-world-orphan tat, while assailing my ears with bland, factory-farmed pop tunes at a volume just loud enough to be irritating while just being quiet enough that you can't actually discern the track from the one that preceded it or the one that will follow.
Through this post-apocalyptic dystopia trudge thousands of similarly dead-eyed consumers, all numbed by constant sensory overload, distracted by the latest shiny piece of tat in the next store window and seemingly eager to hand over vast sums of money in the vain hope that acquisition will somehow equal affirmation, and their life will therefore be enhanced by a couple of yards of distressed denim stitched by a struggling mother of six in Bangalore. They can't walk in a straight line, or at a normal pace, and they don't know where their wallets are, and they seem to genuinely like the whole excruciating pas-de-deux called "the retail experience".
Frankly, given the option to extirpate all dead-eyed consumers, I'd take it, and add the optional extra "sow their land with salt so they can never come back".
I have held this opinion for many years. I once agreed to go "shopping" with an ex-girlfriend. I was buying a new bass guitar, and was heading into the city to pick it up. She said she'd come along as long as I came "shopping" with her afterwards.
Well, I got my bass. I'd already chosen the product. I spent ten minutes haggling down the price, and five minutes forking over the money. But then I had to spend an excruciating several hours as we trudged from shop to shop, ears beaten and brusied by the worst that bland mass-manufactured pop had to offer, as she endlessly rummaged through rack after rack of seemingly identical tops, occasionally taking one out, trying it on, and demanding an opinion.
It's a fucking top. What more opinion need there be? CAN'T YOU SEE I'M DYING HERE??
I spent over an hour in Top Shop alone. A man can only take so much.
It never happened again. We broke up a short while afterwards.
This, though, is what many people seem to want from their retail experiences. Near-endless browsing culminating in a purchase experience which is hoped to be satisfying, but which will in fact leave you more insecure than when you began, and all the while the stores get more and more similar to each other, and you can't be sure if the sullen skinny teenager blown up ten times over lifesize in the window of shop A is the same sullen skinny teenager wearing almost exactly the same clothes in the window of Shop B. The mannequins don't even have faces any more. You know why? BECAUSE THAT'S HOW RETAIL SEES YOU. You're a faceless zombie, whose only purpose is to feed the beast from the magic plastic you keep in your pocket. It was not mere whimsy that led George A. Romero to set Dawn Of The Dead in a shopping mall.
Through this stygian horror we call "retail precincts" I occasionally stride, seeking shelter from the rain, or desperately hunting some kind of sustenance, because, you see, if you work in the CBD, you cannot avoid retail precincts. If you want to eat, chances are you'll be heading to a food court, and chances are that'll be in a shopping centre. Worse, it'll be in the very centre of the precinct, because if there's one thing the owners of these places want, it's to drive you deeper into their lairs, so you can't escape without being further assailed by advertising. If, like me, you work around Town Hall Station in Sydney, chances are you probably don't even get from the train to the office without passing several million dollars worth of absolutely identical product in the QVB, the Galeries[sic] or any of the other surrounding retail wonderlands. And everything not connected with shopping must, by decree, be accompanied by maximally-focus-grouped marketing, otherwise the real-estate cost is wasted.
Next time you're in one of these places, check the layout. The food court is never near the entrance. You're always forced to run the gauntlet of the retail industry, just to get a lousy plastic container two-thirds full of rice, two ninths full of teriyaki chicken and one ninth botulism and salmonella. This, it is hoped, will prime your already softened consumer mind to buy the stuff you saw on the way in. The entire walkway layout will be the same. Easy to stray in, hard to get out. Large shopping centres are deliberately built to pull you in to the centre, then allow you to permeate slowly outwards, exposing your softened mind to branding and visual marketing that will eventually see your resolve collapse, and see you participating, shamelessly, in the orgy of consumerism for yourself. There are entire branches of behavioural science devoted to bamboozling the consumer mind and making it spend spend spend. They're working on YOU too.
It'll happen eventually. Branding and marketing will get you. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but the brand will become lodged, and soon, you'll be picking out examples from thirty racks of identical tops, trying them on one by one, demanding the opinion of an unwilling co-participant and then handing over your card to have your bank account whittled away in the hopes of validating your pointless existence.
And you'll walk out with a Nike hat on. And you won't hate yourself.
Fuck that.
This is, of course, not to say that I don't occasionally have good retail experiences, and it's certainly not to say that I never participate. I, like everyone, need stuff. It's just that I've now developed a technique of finding a place that works for me, trying on a shirt, then buying five identical shirts right then so that I don't have to come back for as long as possible, and when they wear out, come back to the same place for the same thing. Same with jeans. Same, really, with everything. Find a cut and a size, buy shitloads of it. The same with most things, actually. Find a shop with good product, knowledgable and discreet staff and a location that engenders as little loathing as possible, keep going back.
Of course, retailers get wise to this, and they refresh their stock - and staff - at intervals, thinking, perhaps, that this is a good thing. Even Woolworths and Coles are in on this, as they seem to agressively trim back their product lines so that anything I actually like goes off the shelves to be replaced by more generic tastless shite designed precisely and scientifically for the mass mouthbreather market. Oh look, a flavour of yogurt that's not identical to every other flavour of yogurt MUST BUY. Two weeks later: Flavour of yogurt discontinued for ever. You get strawberry, "wild berry", or nothing, motherfucker.
FUCK.
This culling of lines into more and more generic categories is, it seems, a good thing for retailers. Economies of scale. Minimal retooling for manufacturers. Protect the margins. But it most certainly is not good for people. It means when my favoured item inevitably goes missing, I have to try endless examples of seemingly identical tat until I finally find one that fits, fending off shop assistants who want to know "if I need help" and trying desperately to get the hell out of the building as fast as I can. It means that when I find something I like, chances are it won't be there in six months when I feel like buying it again. And what is there will be largely disposable, designed with a lifespan of less than six months. The stitches will unravel, the buttons will fall off, the fabric will wear through, and I'll be left with nothing. While in the suburbs there are second-hand clothes shops selling stuff made in the 1970s that's been worn to Timbuktu and back and STILL has all its buttons still attached. What. The. Ragged-assed. Fuck?
And having mentioned the topic, why do sales assistants constantly want to know if I need help? Motherfucker, if I need help, you'll know about it, because I'll walk up to you and I'll ask you a fucking question. For now, fuck off back there behind your counter, play some fucking solitaire and when I'm ready, I'll ask you something and I'll expect a salient and informed fucking answer. Don't call the manager over because it's a new product and you don't know. Don't make up an answer. Don't, above all else, try to bullshit me as to the specifications because I've already done my decision-making on the internet and I know more about this product than you do. I want to know the price, and I want the price to be correct, and I want you to shut the fuck up, take my money and let me out of the building. The only reason I'm here is because I need it today, or because I can't find it online. For everything else, there's the internet. Oh, and if I'm spending over a grand, I want you to get me a fucking coffee. Now.
So, to summarise?
If the internet, coupled with initiatives like Buy Nothing New Day could finally kill retail as we know it, I would not shed a tear. In fact, I would consider throwing a small party, at which I will serve delicious beverages bought from a knowledgable specialist retailer - not a chain. I will be wearing good-quality clothes that fit, which I bought at a shop that makes the job of finding a size easy, and which sources its goods in economies mostly based on not-slavery. I will likewise have enough spare cash to pay for canapes, because said specialist retailer hasn't gouged me to death for the privilege of buying their wank or spent a billion dollars on marketing pictures of pale, emeciated teenagers.
In short, I'll have stuff that works, at a fair price, without having to do the zombie-dance to get it.
Yeah, like that'll ever happen.