Check Out Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy

Here is the U.S we’re heading into the Thanksgiving holiday, already surrounded by the madness of Black Friday, coupled with anxiety brought about by the recent election. It feels like everyday has been Black Friday under dark cloudy political skies for too long already, and of course that will continue straight into Christmas and beyond. 

 Here’s a thought. If you gather with friends and family this Thanksgiving, instead of watching football or squabbling over politics, tune everybody into the Netflix documentary Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy. The trailer is embedded above.

This somewhat entertaining documentary (it’s presentation conceit feels a bit too cutesy for my tastes), tackles the problems of rampant consumerism through a prism of what happens to all the stuff we buy this Black Friday, those previous, those to come, and any other day of the year.

The highlights of the series are the short cut interviews with former employees of Amazon, Adidas, Apple, folks from the fashion industry, and activists who are trying to address the issues of the large amount of waste created with all of our purchasing power.

If you’ve even remotely been paying attention to the world, there won’t be any grand surprises about the large amounts of unrecyclable waste we’re swimming in and adding to. That said, hearing some of the folks who feel responsible for their own decisions that led their company down that path of excess discuss their shifts in thinking makes the piece worthwhile.

There also aren’t any real surprises in the way the documentary lays out the tricks of the marketing trade to convince us to buy more stuff. Addressing the issue through a perspective of saying we could all buy less certainly makes sense, but given we all know that the game is rigged no differently than carnival games are, it makes one wonder why we do keep coming back each time the circus tents get pitched. 

Style points and lack of surprises aside, Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy is worth viewing, especially I would think if you have younger ones in your holiday household who might still be impressionable.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.