If I may, I shall whole heartedly side with one of my faves #HughGrant when he says “I hate water bottles” though not for the reasons Greta and Al Gore might. I find the insistence of the travel mug, & the water bottle as some sort of mandatory unisex accessory to be quite frankly appalling. The #stanleycup is a case study in itself ofc, but more recently the #StarbucksHolidayCup truly defies logic. Stanley somehow pulled in over $800 million for that little (big?) cup in 2024 alone. The most recent Starbucks Holiday Cup has led people to camp out overnight like teenagers waiting for a chance to buy Aerosmith tickets in the 80s! The same cup winds up on the secondary market for $200.00? Bloody Hell! Marketing 101? Smoke and Mirrors? Consumerism run amok? Or maybe just maybe just like Friday Night Football everyone secretly wants someone or “something” to cheer for?
On the flip side I bring you the minimalist, this individual eschews any need to horde/save/collect/purchase the latest Temu item. These people will go out of the way to avoid being bothered no matter what the masses have inundated them with. Oh sure some will hide behind those lofty sounding ideals; mindful consumption anyone? Some will even tell you it’s somehow ALL about their alleged mental health. (self preservation combined with saving the planet?) Call me a skeptic, but I’m not entirely sold on that either. (pun intended) This world that demands our attention at every GPS defined turn has left me wondering IF the two extremes have more in common than not? Advertising your wares used to be a fairly singular process. Create a product, start with word of mouth and watch it grow until you either saw it everywhere or at the very least everyone in your town couldn’t stop talking about it. Now here we are in the global market place with everyone from trillionaires to only approximately only one quarter of Tanzanians having owning smartphones ALL manage to have access to some form of purchasing power that Don Draper(#madmen) could only dream of. Scrolling, and clicking its unavoidable despite what the maximum minimalist will tell you. And yet, big box stores are on the way out and Starbucks has removed the chairs right from under you. The minimalists are making headway! Sure the anti-consumer will avoid purchasing a lovely loveseat from Ikea so they can read a book on a pillow purchased from a flea market in the comfort of their sparse living room, but don’t sleep on the demand for those 75 inch TV’s either! This battle of tug of war has no end in sight. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a collection Coca Cola bottles that need organizing. With apologies to Anne Spenser; “one cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach”
Santangelo Says 