I come from the generation of people fighting each other over Cabbage Patch dolls and Tickle Me Elmos and this holiday season, I don't sense any hype for any items like that. Maybe that's a good thing because I don't like seeing grandmothers assaulting one another for toys, but did anyone else get excited for Black Friday this year?
Throughout a year of skyrocketing prices on everything under the sun, now is the traditional time when retail stores are allowed to make money. I don't know about you, but what the hell does the average American even have left over after a year like this?
Other than paying more and working longer to afford the shiny new toys and things one would usually expect from Christmas, we also live in a world where that stuff is usually available any time we want to order it. Long gone are the hunts for toys and items because a simple internet search can find the item and people can bid on them after even.
Who knows where the prices for a Cabbage Patch doll would have gone if Ebay was around back then, but what's the top item now? I might be out of the loop here but I also feel like this season, having been so exploited in the past, was forced on us as soon as Halloween ended almost a month ago. But even with all the decorations being hung in stores seemingly at the stroke of midnight the day of Halloween, I have yet to catch any advertisement for any product that is even different. No new gadget, no new service, nothing. Have the conglomerates that feed us this stuff finally run out of ideas?
I've been watching people in my life air fry everything in existence for the past several years. I guess that's a great item for people who focus on texture when it comes to food but I didn't pick up any chatter about any great deals or new models that everyone has to rush out and buy. How many in this audience even crawled out of bed to go to the stores this morning?
Gadgets aren't all that come to mind for me when it comes to Holiday door-buster deals. For music nerds like me, this is the software purchasing season. For programs that usually run hundreds of dollars, companies used to give them away starting today. Now, the market is so full of options, many people don't even need to purchase anything of that nature with the amount of freeware and donation-ware available. So there's no use anymore to hold out until Christmas if you wanna release that new track, in most cases unless you wanted something super specific like me. I'm a little picky, but certainly not the average producer looking to make the latest pop hit.
Video games, I could give two shits about since like PS2. Sorry, but I realized I had a problem with obsession and attention a long ass time ago and the video games had to go. Long gone of the days of me spending hours on top of hours playing something, freaking out over losing, or emotionally investing myself into the mainstream story-lines of most video game franchises. These companies have gone full retard the past few years and started banning professional players even for supporting the protests in Hong Kong or Taiwan. So they can take their level 33 dragon dong and stick it right in their sedentary, media addicting, totally inclusive asses.
Is there a movie coming out for Christmas worth a shit? I will be watching A Christmas Story, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, and Scrooged as usual but are there any blockbusters that I should drag myself to the theater for just to pay over ten dollars for ten cents worth of popcorn?
Maybe I'm just getting old? I have most of the things I need, and the ones I don't I can't afford, even on the lowest sale price of the season. The people in my life seem to be getting along well. Even though everything costs soo damn much these days. Is that the final stage in this crapitalistic system we live in?
Was it always meant to be that we were to adopt all of these new exciting gadgets and gizmos every Christmas until we were fully incapacitated by our addiction and dependence on them? One could probably say the same about coffee and coffee makers, try to take that away from a caffeine addicted individual like myself. Good luck!
As an optimist, even begrudgingly at times, I look at this Christmas as potentially the end of a terrible era in American culture. From the commercialism and materialism of our dealings with one another to the type of consumption that we are responsible for. It is kinda sad to see the hype of the retail holiday season fade, but maybe in a few years we can replace it with something more meaningful?
And in the other months of the year, maybe we can figure out how to make profit and get the government and the conglomerates that benefit from its tax system out of the picture. Maybe they can get into the toy business instead, and work on the new Canada Car Jumping racetrack idea I have in mind...
Six we must be the same sorta age I related to this so well. I stopped playing video games after the ps2 era also - for the same reasons you mentioned lol. Agree with ya on the Christmas movie front as well - all the classics have been made. Thank you man!