It’s not every day that you read an article and hope that the people writing it have willfully made up the quotes and people in it, but, honestly, I’m hoping to God that Ruth Shalit and Robin Danielson Hafitz completely fabricated today’s lead story in Salon. It’s about how certain consumers feel personally victimized about the collapse of dotcom retailers, and is entitled, with typical Salon high drama, “The Day The Brands Died.”
In the article, Shalit and Hafitz quote people who express self-loathing for taking advantage of the dotcoms’ increasingly insane loss-leader brand awareness tactics (“There was a looting mentality going on,” said one respondent. “Now we all feel shame”) and are now dealing with the soul-crushing reality that they may have to do their own shopping again, just like common trolls (“After sitting at home in my bathrobe, and having some nice man hand me my movie, how can I ever go back to Blockbusters?” asked one woman. “It’s like living in a Third World country.”)
Who are these people? And more to the point, presuming they actually exist, why do Shalit, Hafitz or Salon think they’re worth even the least bit of sympathy or interest from the rest of us? I don’t feel at all sorry for the chick who’s confused her own sloth for genuine deprivation, although I do suggest we take up a collection to kidnap her and ship her down to Guatemala, where she can pick coffee beans for sixteen cents an hour until her fingers bleed, the better to contrast her new living situation with the need to actually leave the fucking house to rent a video. Look, I’m waving a dollar here. Who wants to join me? At least she’d be out of our country for a while.
It’s embarrassing to think that one shares a planet with people whose priorities are as screwed up as those in this article, an entire class of human that apparently believes that whole point of technology is to allow one never to leave one’s own home. These aren’t like the people who lived on the virgin prairie and relied on the Sears Roebuck catalogue for their staple needs, after all. In order to take advantage of a dotcom delivery service, you have to live in a big metropolitan area, i.e., somewhere you can walk down to the corner and buy your own goddamned beef jerky.
To feel an inexplicable sense of loss because now you have to go out onto the street and walk several yards for groceries indicates a disconnect from reality that borders on genuine psychosis, not to mention egomania. Webvan, one of the dotcoms featured in the article, managed to suck through a billion dollars in investor capital and put hundreds of workers on the streets, and all these jerks can think about is the idea that no one’s going to arrive at the door with their Cherry Garcia anymore (note: that’s what significant others are for, you dumbasses).
Articles like this reinforce in me the idea that what we really need in this country is good, long, severe depression. Not for everyone, of course. Certainly not for me (I did my stint of being poor growing up, thank you very much. I’m done with it now). But the laid-off goatee-and-cell-phone set, for whom having to sacrifice is having to settle for $70,000 a year doing IT at a bank instead of the $85,000 and options they had at their dotcom, well, a good solid dose of honest, stomach-clenching poverty is just what they need to get their priorities reset to a less complacently smug level. After a year or two having choose between the gas bill and food whose protein component doesn’t come in a “flavor packet,” they’ll be happy to walk to Blockbuster under their own power and rent that video. And maybe they’ll even say “thank you” to the clerk.
It’s not likely. But one can dream—and dream that once these people leave their apartments to go shopping in the big scary world, the first thing they do is go to buy a clue. That is, if they actually exist. Let’s hope they don’t.