Just say “NO” to crap!
- March 19, 2008 by Fox | Comments: 30
I’m launching an anti-crap campaign. I want you to say “NO” to buying crap. I can’t think of a better way to improve one’s wealth, health, and self than to kick the crap habit. Like any drug, crap has a cost. Crap hits your wallet, abuses the environment, and needles your health both mentally and physically. The sources of crap are vast and deep. But the most insidious forms of crap are financial crap, food crap, and consumer crap.
Financial crap encompasses all those terrible investment products which make dealers big money and bleed investors dry. Investments like mutual funds with high MERs, principle protected notes (PPNs), segregated funds, and whole life insurance.
Food crap is all that packaged processed product displayed prominently in grocery store aisles, vending machines, and the freezer section. It seems the food scientists and product marketers have hijacked our health and sold us on packaged portions of phony foods.
Consumer crap can been seen on any suburban street bursting out of homes and spewing across yards. Consumer crap includes the gadgets, toys, and pretty plastic things filling our land fills and cluttering our homes.
I want you to get high on life, not crap. Here are five reasons to kick back at crap.
1. Crap is “whack”:
Most of the stuff out there is crap. Go to any store, turn on any television, or surf any web page and chances are you will be whacked in the face with crap. Crap permeates and seethes into every market imaginable. I see consumer crap in shopping malls, I smell food crap in grocery stores, and I hear financial bull crap on business television. Learn to smack the crap before getting whacked.
2. Crap rots your brain:
This is your brain. This is your brain on crap. Marketing machines are mavericks at getting your brain hooked on crap. They know how to appeal to your senses, your emotions, your desires, and your bank account. They make crap sound important, needed, and affordable. Musical marketing messages get under you skin and into your veins by mapping your brain to buy crap. Marketers needle their way into your wallet by launching crap, unveiling crap, and convincing you to upgrade crap. The hit is quick, pleasurable, and intoxicating.
3. Crap kills:
Crap kills our environment and rots in our landfills. Look everywhere and you see the causalities of crap corroding our landscape. Crap food kills people by rotting our arteries and poisoning our blood. Crap food fails to nourish and causes disease and obesity.
4. Crap is addictive:
Ever notice why you buy crap? Crap is bought to perhaps help feel emotionally better one day, fill a short-term desire, or as an unplanned splurge. You get a crap fix, the rush heightens, and then you need another hit to bring the warm feelings back. For some reason we hoard our crap until we’ve stuffed our bodies and homes full of cluttered mess. Perhaps this crap collecting is a throw back from our hunter and gather days when we needed to store and stash our stuff for times of scarcity. Perhaps crap collection is something we’re hard-wired to do and we don’t have a sense of being stuffed.
5. Crap is disposable:
Something weird happened to the value of stuff from my grandparents era to today. Back then, stuff was honored, maintained, shared, and passed down from generation to generation. My grandparent’s stuff lasted and was expected to be useful year after year. Today, stuff doesn’t endure the test of time. It becomes obsolete, discontinued, deprecated, and abandoned. We garbage and consume crap quickly and fiercely. Crap is a disposable and insatiable addiction.
Just say “NO” to crap!
Just say “NO” to buying crap. Say no to the shopping stupor, the toxic food cravings, and the promise of financial bliss. Stop chasing the crap dragon. It’s possible to kick the crap habit by investing in quality products and whole foods. We vote with our dollars. The more we vote for quality and the less we vote for crap the better our health, our wealth, and our self.
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Comments:
Crap is whack. You are punny.
Wow…so true. the one that i found most interesting was “crap is disposable”…that the concept and quality of “stuff” changed over time.
I’m with you. I’m saying “NO” to crap!
Awesome post. Sure gives you something to think about it!
Upgrading the crap: this is such a curse, isn’t it! Just when you find a *good* item, they discontinue making it, and the ‘newer, shinier’ model is inferior or incompatible with what you already have. Electronic crap is an endless cycle of upgrading. Arrgh.
I’ve noticed that even companies which used to make durable furniture, appliances, etc. seem to be trading on their good reputations to sell cheapened versions, some even designed to be non-repairable! I find it ironic that I can buy very sturdy older furniture for a few dollars at the Habitat Re-store, while the newer mass-market furniture (mostly veneered particleboard) costs a lot. Style and fashion trends seem to take precedence over quality. Television is probably influencing this trend… superficiality is everywhere. And speaking of TV’s, just imagine how many old ones will hit the landfills when the signals switch to all digital.
Well said. Separating the crap from the things that hold true value to us is probably the greatest step we can take toward both financial freedom and personal happiness.
Yes! Preach on! I’ve been trying to say the same thing about crap lately to my family and coworkers but they just look at me like i’m nutty.
I love your blog. Your food ideas are wonderful, that’s the way I’ve been trying to eat for the past year. It requires a lot of forethought, but really that’s so much better than shoveling crap into our bodies mindlessly. Keep on bloggin!
Chickadee - I think simple economics explains why producers are switching for durability to disposable product production. Supply and Demand. Consumers are switching their preference from durable goods (when it was tougher to make a buck) to ‘up with the jones’ quantity and flair. These quality products stay on the store shelves while the people head to Walmart and Target to get their crapola cheap.
It is said to be successful you either have a product that can’t be copied or a market that has very difficult entry restrictions. Barring that you better be the low-cost producer because it is price that wins our hearts today.
Another factor that plays in here is our utility (satisfaction). I think there has been a continual shift in this area over the last little while as people gain less and less satisfaction from purchases. I would assume girls loved getting that next pair of shiek shoes but now all they think about after they buy the one pair is that they should have got the pair on the shelve at payless right beside it.
You should search for local auctions in your neighbourhoods and surrounding areas. That is where you get top quality for rock bottom prices!!!
Nice post. I leave my crap at work (http://stupidmoneyhacks.com/?p=4).
Do you have a picture of what my brain on crap would look like?
Found you via Skelliewag. Love, love, love this post!
Simple Mom: HUGS! Thank you! I always wanted to write this post, but finally felt empowered when Skellie challenged her readers to write a Trump Card Post. Writing this post took forever. I drove my “better half” nuts. I drove myself nuts. I am beyond thrilled she included me in her list, 10 Bloggers Share Their Best Post Ever.
Mr. Stupid: I don’t have a specific picture of your “brain on crap”, although I am certain you’ve experienced hundreds and thousands of marketing messages in your life.
When I wrote about marketing wiring and hooking our brains on crap I was alluding to the use of marketing Mind Share. One can see blatant “Mind Share” in action in children who can identify product marketing slogans, logos, and mascots with ease. Makes me cry, actually.
Looks like you have taken no prisoners.
After this, if anyone buys crap, they do so at their own risk.
Great post.
I work for a recycling company that also runs the local garbage dump/transfer station… I am totally amazed at all the perfectly good still usable quality stuff that comes in there! My problem is trying not to take home the ‘quality stuff’ I find there. But free-to-me (as an employee) is a very good price
My shelves, tables, chairs, landscaping timbers, containers for garden pots, dresser drawers, firewood, fencing, hutch, teapot, cast iron fry pans, windows, trim for the construction, etc…. have all come ‘free’ from there. I just can’t believe it! Also, all the cedar decking, post and beams, plywood, siding, and even roofing materials for my patio deck and my wood shed have all come from there - free again! Unbelievable!
@anon AMAZING! I think working at a recycling company is the ultimate “money hack” in that everything is FREE! I truly don’t understand why people throw away perfectly good items. I think our consumption-based society has lost the plot…we’re led to believe (by the marketing mavericks) if something is not the latest model, then it’s worthless. Kudos to you for saving big bucks and finding forgotten treasure. I think a blog showcasing your daily finds would be mind blowing.
I think a blog about my daily finds would get me fired
Or get somebody aggravated that I ‘get things for free’… you know how it goes. But it is mind boggling what comes in there.
This week I had on my ‘want list’ some large wooden planter boxes, two green plastic totes for the garden as I was out of raised beds, and I’d been looking for wheels for a planter for in the house this winter -salad greens. I priced the plastic totes at a local store, they were $5.99 on sale, but didn’t look too sturdy - the ones with handles, and only bright orange which I didn’t want. My “want list” means only that I want them, not that I can afford them on my limited budget, nor that I will be buying them - just that they’d be useful to have, but not a necessity.
Yesterday I brought home a cedar wooden planter 18×18 for the front steps, and a 3×3 wooden box for a yard planter - winter squash and kales. Then I found not two, but seven!!! green plastic round totes with handles, and the drainage holes already drilled in the bottom of them! Score! Then in the wood pile, an old crib with plug-in wheels on the 4 posts! Voila! My shopping done - cost Zero! As a bonus, a box with about 20 rolls of good wrapping paper, a stoneware outside thermometer, and a fishing gaff for a friend. Excellent company benefits, wouldn’t you say! haha! Oh, and family working at a local garden nursery called saying that the FREE old veggies starts were out - did I want any - of course I did… now I can fill those extra totes I found
Providence! I am thankful!
Hey Fox!
I just found your blog the other day and I just love it. Your posts are fantastic. In relation to this post, have you seen the video called The Story of Stuff? I think you’ll like it, it’s all about what you’re talking about here. It’s at http://www.storyofstuff.com.
Fox. I know this was awhile back but I have to comment because I absolutely agree x 10000. NO! NO! NO! ( to crap!). We just don’t need all this stuff. Back to a few quality things rather than lots of badly made stuff_Aahh, so much simpler and better for everyone–wouldn’t that be nice? I’m being a bit cheeky because we started a website all about not giving lots of “stuff” for gifts, etc. http://www.dreambank.org. What we hope will be the new model for gift giving. Our motto is “Get Dreams. Not Stuff”. We hope it catches on… Thanks for the great post.
Dawn
It’s my thing for this year. Less Crap. More money saved.
Fabulously Broke in the City
Just a girl trying to find a balance between being a Shopaholic and a Saver…
Awesome article - insightful, funny, and spot on. Happy 2009.
I totally agree. We are surrounded by so much “crap” all the time. Most things people own are nothing but unused junk. Just think about the stuff you own and how much you actually use most of them. Think 80/20 rule. Its probably good to purge and unclutter. Better for the mind.
Thanks for a great article.
I agree, great post. I like that quote: “stop chasing the crap dragon!” I’m somewhat guilty in this area since as a graduate student I buy a lot of books for research, most of which I keep, but I see those as professional expenses. Other than that I buy the basic furnishing I need for my apartment, but I’m not very attached to them. I wish I could say that all I really need are two suitcases and I’m ready to move my life somewhere else - but I’m not there yet.
Here’s what I wrote about my own goals in that regard. I call it maximising cashflow consciousness and creating life leverage:
http://tinyurl.com/ddgmp3