conspicuous consumerism

Prime Day shmime day!

When Amazon started its “Prime Day” deal a few hundred internet years ago, it was obvious what would happen if it became a success:

  • Amazon would expand it to be more than just a single day to better milk it. (Done. It’s now spread over two days.)
  • Other stores/sites would shamelessly copy it and cleverly call their versions something different (“48-Hour Sales Event”, “Black Friday in July”) but you totally know it’s their version of “Prime Day.” (Done. Two-day sales are everywhere now during Amazon’s event.)
  • Amazon would start to make the deals worse because now they have the inertia and know people are going to look and buy, anyway. They’d also start making it harder to get good deals by making them time-limited (even within the two days of the sale) or require you to reserve a spot to qualify to give them your money. (Done and done.)
  • Every tech (and many other) sites would report on “Prime Day” as if it were legitimate news. It is not legitimate news. (Done x1 billion.)
  • A lot of those same tech (and other sites) would be filled with articles on the “best deals” for the entire two days, crowding out more interesting content. Or just any content. (Done. My favourite punching bag, engadget, has 17 hits for “prime day” on its main page–which actually seems on the low side!) EDIT: Just for fun, The Verge has 10 hits, Ars Technica has 2.
  • I would complain about “Prime Day” in a blog post and refuse to write it without surrounding it with quotation marks, implying I’m saying it with sarcasm. (Boy howdy, done!)

Here is an image of a prime cat for your viewing pleasure:

Prime Day Shmime Day! (I say)

Pretty much every tech site yesterday and today is filled with “stories” about deals for Amazon’s Prime Day, which is actually two days. Why do I not like this? Let me list the ways:

  • The sheer amount of space devoted to the “deals”. Engadget, not exactly a hardcore tech site admittedly, is almost nothing but a feed of Amazon deals today (check the image below). Want to read actual tech news? It’s there, you just have to find it sandwiched between Amazon deals now.
  • Every single one of these sites is posting deals that are exclusively for Amazon.com (the U.S. site), so the deals aren’t even relevant to most of the planet. America is not the world, but you’d never know it by checking Ars Technica, say.
  • It all feels a bit unseemly, this two-day mini-orgy of tech consumerism, with nothing to counter-balance it, and really, a lot of the deals are not even that good (as expected).
  • Motivated self-interest (see the second screenshot below) means this ain’t gonna get better any time soon.

Unedited list of stories from today’s Engadget main page, with the Prime Day deals highlighted. This is just what I could easily capture without scrolling:

Why this is unlikely to go away at any point in the immediate, near or long term future:

I will give Ars Technica’s Jeff Dunn credit here–he’s compiled a single story for most of the deals, which is a) convenient for readers b) makes the rest of the site much more readable until this nonsense is over and c) the second paragraph links to 15 (!) previous stories Ars Technica have run that cast a critical eye at Amazon and its practices.

Blah-ck Friday

The incessant promotions for Black Friday leave me weary. I know it’s hardly novel to complain about rampant consumerism, but it’s just so relentless, with a big, odious emphasis (say that three times fast) on FOMO (fear of missing out).

I subscribe to a number of newsletters to keep up on occasional deals and to see if stuff I normally buy is on sale, and also to sometimes find interesting new things. Black Friday basically turns my inbox into BLACK FRIDAY BLACK FRIDAY BLACK FRIDAY BLACK FRIDAY BLACK FRIDAY.

I now just automatically delete every newsletter until Black Friday/Cyber Monday/Black Week/Month/Year is over.

At least we have less than a month left of Christmas music being piped into every public space 24/7.

The cult of Apple

Really, is there any other explanation? This post is in reference to the new Apple iPhone 4:

I’ll be heading to the Stonestown Apple Store around 3AM (did not pre-order, as I had plans to exchange my < month old 3GS at AT&T until they decided not to have any, the bastards). iPadding the wait like Woolen Horde.

Someone who already had a less-than-a-month-old iPhone 3GS (latest model) stood in line at three in the morning to get an iPhone 4 (new model) and killed the time waiting for the store to open by playing with the last Apple gadget (iPad)  he also waited in line for. It’s like a Syfy movie about mind control devices except it’s actually happening.

People are weird.