For those of you in Melbourne town, I’ll be taking my video camera down to the Bourke Street Mall on Nov 24 to cover “Buy Nothing Day“. Why not come along and join in the merriment?
According to Wikipedia:
Buy Nothing Day is an informal day of protest against consumerism observed by social activists. It was founded by Vancouver artist Ted Dave and subsequently promoted by the Canadian Adbusters magazine. Participants refrain from purchasing anything for 24 hours in a concentrated display of consumer power. The event is intended to raise awareness of what some see as the wasteful consumption habits of First World countries.
There’s a detailed explanation of the idea from our friends across the Tasman. Here’s an excerpt:
Why don’t you want people to shop?
We are saying we want people to think about what they buy, and whether consuming ever-more actually does increase quality of life. The effects of over-consumption on the environment (such as toxic pollution and climate change) are widely known. These mean we need to reduce consumption, especially in many Western countries like New Zealand that are consuming much more than their fair share of resources. We are also concerned with the role of advertising, the effects of global trade liberalisation and inequities between the developing and developed worlds.
Events:
The Melbourne Culture Jammers will be back in the Bourke Street Mall, cutting up credit cards. Join us. 11am-2pm, Friday November 24th.
May as well go… I certainly won’t have anything better to do with my time because all my exams will finally be over.
There will be no credit card cutting though. The only one I have is for emergencies only anyway.
Not buying anything? That is the crapest excuse for a protest ever! A better protest would be to not Consume anything that you didn’t Make yourself or grow yourself!!!!! Now that would be a protest!
And what are you going to film it on? A video camera you purchased? Isn’t that “wasteful consumption”?
JOKE!!!!!!!!
I might come down and bring McDonalds and all sorts of great things I bought. Maybe I might handout Dunk’en Donuts!
Hey Cam, don’t forget your Flask of Coffee!!
HAHAHAHA, hey Miriam, I want you to secretly follow came and film if he buys something!
Molly
Could be fun but then I’m fairly clumsy so I would probably give the game away with a loud yelp after tripping over a smelly hippy.
I don’t need any new bruises. The massive one I got last week from walking into the corner of the bed is only just fading.
A great idea!
But to truely no buy anything you will need to walk or cycle down to Fed Square, take food you have grown in your own garden, disconnect all electricity, gas, phone, internet etc. 🙂
A better result would be to reduce your consumer spending by 25% year over year. True consumer power would be to refrain from purchasing Vista/Zune/PS3 etc and have these large companies feel the pain.
Just my 2 cents.
well I think the point of the day is to reduce our consumption, not completely avoid anything you may have spent money on in the past! I should sleep under the stars in a mud hut crafted with my own bare hands as well?
By the way, I reckon I’ve cut my spending by 50% in the last couple of years just by not having a job. 🙂
But have you cut your consumption by 50%?
And what about the type of consumption and the packaging of the consumption?
And what are these trouble makers, I mean protesters suggesting people do with the money left over?
Molly
Whaaat? Sprecha ze english?
Huh, what can’t you understand? Perhaps your be in the US to long and your speaking Yank!
Molly
Don’t you all ready live in a mud hut crafted with by your bare hands cause you are a struggling entrepreneur.
What a tokenistic protest.
BUY NOTHING… er… and just use the stuff you bought the day before instead…
The idea (in case it went over your head) is not to buy anything for 24 hours. How is that tokenistic, Rob?
Well, I already go whole days on end without buying anything, week in, week out… I see nothing special in it. I don’t think I’m the Lone Ranger in this.
Once the car’s fuelled up for the week, and all the groceries are in the fridge on a Monday night, I might not conceivably buy anything at all until that coming weekend… if that. Sometimes my next purchase is the following Monday when I refill the car and restock the groceries.
All not buying something means is that you’re simply living off stuff you already bought, or you’re planning to buy something in the future. I just see doing it as some sort of ‘statement’ achieving diddly, beyond giving this guy his 15 minutes.
Rob… serious question… what’s the colour of the sky on your planet?
Well, it appears blue because of the scattered light effect, but if I was in space, it would appear darker because there is no atmosphere to distribute the scattered light. Why?
Really, I can’t see how you can applaud a day that basically boils down to this, “Ner, ner! I’m not buying a can of Coke today… but I will be drinking one I bought yesterday…”
Find/replace that can of Coke with just about anything you might consume on “buy Nothing Day”. Starting to see the picture now?
The bottom line is that not buying things for one day does squat beyond giving this idiot his 15 minutes. It really is THAT simple.
A real change would be “Don’t buy {insert product} ever again!” Now THAT would actually do something, and get noticed. But to not do it for one day? I return to my point that it’s tokenistic. Because it is.
Jesus… okay, as usual, whilst my left brain says “ignore him, he’s being a twat”, by right brain says “no frakkin way! step up!” and so…
The point, dear Robster, is about getting people, for one day out of 365, to stop and think about their spending behaviour. Lots of people, obviously unlike you, actually buy stuff every day of the week. I know you’re a journo, and so don’t spend much of your life in the REAL WORLD (TM), but one of these days, try to break yourself away from your Reuters feed one lunch hour and head for your local shopping mall.
It’s the conditioning of “MUST… SPEND… NOW…” that this initiative is trying to interrupt. Advertisers around the world will spend $417 billion in 2006 trying to convince people to buy something every day of the year. (source: CNN http://money.cnn.com/2005/04/18/news/fortune500/tv_advertising/)
Cam, I can see it all really clearly. And what you say makes perfect and utter sense as a concept. But… it just doesn’t work! Even people who will buy into this concept 110% and get all self-righteous about how bitchin’ they are for doing so, are still going to drive to work that day in the car they bought, iPod happily playing through their car stereo. Glancing in the rear view mirror, they’ll decide they’d look cooler with their Ray Bans on. Glasses in place, they’ll ponder whether their new Armnai shirt is scratchy or not and debate whether the car is happier on premium or regular unleaded. Sure, they didn’t buy anything that day – and thus fulfilled this unwritten contract with the Buy nothing Day concept they are so enamoured with – but did it really change anything? Unlike a 40hr Famine, where you actually go hungry and genuinely feel something, I reckon the vast majority of people who are supporting Buy Nothing Day are going to give the concept a thought, maybe even two, but will probably miss the utter irony as they sit there, pondering the world, surrounded by all the luxuries that are, allegedly, so evil to posess and which will be replaced in a few months time by all new stuff. People, on the whole, are hypocrites. And that’s why I, for one, couldn’t buy into this concept in a zillion years.
see Rob, I don’t think you DO get it. The idea isn’t to immolate yourself. It’s to spend less money on stuff you don’t need. Sure – it would be great if we all cut back 35 days a year. But that’s a big ask. Small steps. I don’t think anyone is suggesting luxuries are evil.
Did you read the link I put in the post? It says:
We’re not expecting everyone to turn round and head for home, and it’s not about whether you pop out for a tin of beans, or some Christmas presents. We’re not trying to have an economic effect. But we do want people to think about whether the frenzy of consumption actually improves their life. Why am I doing this? Which ad am I responding to? What do I value?
This post is sort of ruined by the one two or three posts up asking how to resync the iPod game that you BOUGHT!
Is this a joke and I just didn’t get it?
Molly
Oh Molly you are so cruel!
Cam I agree with you we all need to stop and think before we consume, the Government wants us to do that as well at the moment they keep rising interest rates to make that point. But I also agree with Rob. Personally I never get into these 1 day a year things, they tend to be so commercial. If this is really important a gorilla-warfare style campaign needs to be launched to actually reduce consumption at every level within our society.
I think I’ll almost definitely check it out provided the weather holds up. Although I’m thinking that multitasking by using the trip into the city as an excuse to go window shopping wouldn’t be in the spirit of the whole thing.
I spotted you in the city today Cam. You were chatting to the people at the buy nothing day table, I was just heading over to say hi and I turned my head for a second and you’d buggered off. Couldn’t figure out where the hell you’d disappeared off to.
Very, very strange.
If I didn’t know better I’d say you were hiding from me 🙂
Well I complete forgot about Buy Nothing day! How did everyone else go?
I went and bought a Porsche.
I went and shot some video. Will put it online when I get a chance, maybe later today.
I went and watched everyone glance at the pamphlets and throw them in the nearest bin… and got a sunburn.