Consumerist Pigs!!

Paco is kind of creepy. But he's not alone. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of corporations doing exactly what he is doing; analyzing peoples' commercial behaviors and selling the results to "interested parties." He might end up like Victor Gruen, realizing at the end of his life that his fascinations and life's work inadvertantly helped to create a scar on the face of American culture, or he might not only be aware of what he is doing, but approving and enthusiastic of the effects. The fact that "the Science of Shopping" exists is certainly a testiment to our species' brutal efficiency and productivity, that not only do we have the productive capacity to create copius amounts of products that do not directly contribute to our survival, but we have massive groups of people that spend their entire lives analyzing how we can get people to desire and obtain larger and larger amounts of these everyday unnecessaries.

I've alluded to this in previous posts, but there is no small amount of irony in the fact that these corporations and retailers are slaves to their own system. They spend ridiculous amounts of money figuring out what consumers want, just so they can make ridiculous amounts of money in return. And for what? So they can in turn become the consumer themselves, buying every shiny, expensive, ultimately worthless thing - and I use that word deliberately - further perpetuating the cycle, producer and consumer all in one. At least that's the ideal. In reality, the real producers - the factory workers, the truck drivers, the janitors at the Polo Mansion - get paid barely enough to eat and feed their families, subjugated by the consumerist notions that reinforce their position in the lower class, and made to take the blame by the American Dream ideal that anyone who works hard can get wherever they want. If Consumerism is Capitalism's nearest offspring, it's high time he were sent to reform school. (How about that zinger?!)