Tootfinder

Say what you will about consumerism, but at least ripping people off is a form of having an actual relationship between human beings. An awful, sick relationship, but a relationship! Sales and marketing require that, at some level, you still view customers as people with thoughts and needs and desires and inner lives.
Now increasingly we run into things like the OP where even ripping people off is more acknowledgement of humanity than a company is willing to give.
5/

Different Corners ▶️
不同的角落 ▶️
📷 Nikon F4E
🎞️ Fujifilm NEOPAN SS, expired 1993
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite

@… Thank you for sharing.
I see some similarities with my own experience of American Christmas, being raised in a Scandinavian culture where Jul (Yule) is a very different tradition.
The consumerism, the self-centrism, all feels very gross and not at all what I connect the holiday with.

I don't think I'm ever going to enjoy gifts.
I can get why people would give them to children. After all, children don't have their own budget. However, I'm talking about occasional gifts, not a new toy every second week, because "we must outcompete the other grandparents". But to adults?
Once I've heard that you should gift people with what they won't buy themselves. Well, that's won't work for me. I'm a minimalist. If I don't need something, I don't want to have it. Unnecessary junk is only emotional burden to me.
I can get why you'd enjoy something handmade. But something people bought? If I need something, I can buy it myself, when I need it. And I definitely don't need people to prove to me that they never cared to learn who I am, and just buy whatever they like or whatever is "fashionable"; which usually means exactly the opposite of what I'd prefer (i.e. something minimalistic). Or even worse, I don't need people manipulating me through gifts.
Sweets? Besides my diabetes, I don't really enjoy expensive shit that people generally buy because it's what's advertised. For the money they waste on it, I'd buy three times as much sweets I'd actually enjoy.
Gift cards? Oh yes, "you aren't supposed to give money, so let's just give the equivalent of money that's actually worth less than money". Actual money? And here we reach the true nonsense; we exchange the same amount of money, so it's just pointless gesture. Unless one of us gives less money…
What I'd really like, as a gift? Maybe that people would finally bother accepting me as who I am. The absolute minimum of caring that I hate consumerism, and not fueling it "for me".
#AntiCapitalism #minimalism #ActuallyAutistic