“Black Friday”. THE day upon which retailers place their hopes and base their projections for their year’s sales and their holiday “retail success”. The day after Thanksgiving, when much of the country is turkey-drugged, stuffed with carbs, off-from-work and feeling the pressure of the looming Christmas gift list. The thing to do? Join the frenzy. Get in line at 4:00 a.m. and shop!
Some friends and I met in downtown Seattle this evening at Westlake Center, the closest place this city has to a central cathedral’s main plaza. (I guess it IS a cathedral of sorts…) The streets were barricaded and filled with people awaiting the lighting of the tall Christmas Tree out in front of Macy’s department store.
What caught my attention most, were the simple, stark, white-on-black signs carried by smartly-dressed, friendly men and women. “Buy More Stuff”, the signs said. And “Hurry!”.
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Some people were sure that these folks had been hired by the retailers to ramp up sales. Others understood the facetiousness of the message. It turns out that there’s a group named “BuyMoreStuff.Org” who states its foundation as: “We’re here to encourage people to buy more stuff. If you don’t hurry, they’ll run out of stuff or you’ll run out of time.”
“It’s interesting: Americans in particular are hyper-attuned to advertising and marketing, which all comes down to Buy More Stuff, and when you reduce it down to its primary thing it becomes very weird. When the message is pared down to its essence is when it confuses people the most.” said Michael Holden, who founded Buy More Stuff with fellow performance artist Cody Strauss.
Yes. There’s been plenty written about our having been hoodwinked into feeling compelled to buy, buy, buy. But one thing I mused over, having recently returned from Italy, was “WOULD this be allowed in Italy, and if so, would anyone actually DO this there?” These simple signs are a clean, inoffensive, provoke-thought-and-get-under-the-skin manifestation of “Freedom of Speech”. Bravo!
I like that they can walk around town with bold signs. I like that they did (and do). I like their message. (And I like their graphics.)
Here’s a Huffington Post blurb from last year’s “performance”.
To twist your head around, read a bit of the Buy More Stuff mailbag here. “Hurry!”