Buy Nothing Day

BND — NOVEMBER 25 2005

Buy Nothing Day is here!

For 24 hours, millions of people around the world do not participate -- in the doomsday economy, the marketing mind-games, and the frantic consumer-binge that's become our culture. We pause. We make a small choice not to shop. We shrink our footprint and gain some calm. Together we say: enough is enough. And we help build this movement to rethink our unsustainable course.

http://www.adbusters.org/metas/eco/bnd/

~Ulrika~

and buy twice as much tomorrow to make up for it! woo!

Ya, well you know what? I work in retail and my rent and bills are paid by commission on sales, so unless you need a roommate then people need to buy things so I can afford to live...k thx

Why would they try to schedule this on the busiest shopping day of the year?

That's the point...

I don't get it.


Seems if someone was trying to have an impact, they would do this on a day when retailers would actually notice a decline in sales.

Perhaps this was started by someone looking for an excuse to avoid the holiday crowds.

View the hysterical TV ad. Oink oink!

http://www.adbusters.org/metas/eco/bnd/tvspot.php

~Ulrika~

Making a blip on the retail radar is one of the goals, but the more useful impact is on the minds of participants and consumers they encounter. Everyone's To Do list gets a little longer this time of year, and it's easy to get caught up in the momentum of holiday shopping (not just gifts, but preparing for the meals, travel, decor and etc), especially with a marketing blitz encouraging you to do just that.

BND not only encourages people to snap out of it for a second and examine their actions, it also stands in sharp contrast to what everyone else is doing today. Instead of being good little gears in the waste economy, BNDers are cleaning their houses, having left-over potlucks, or making out on the sofa: relaxed, human activities. Doesn't that reflect the holiday spirit a bit better than burning a small nation's GNP in oil in a mass crawl to the nearest shopping mecca? Doesn't it seem like a better way of living than just keeping busy in order to keep everyone else busy?

As for the "Gotta eat" argument from the retail sector, I know what it's like to scrape for grocery money, but keeping our heads down in the harness is what got us this Brave New World.

But what about the awesome sales?

Yay for AppleWeb!

Oh.. wait...

Does that include hookers?

There is nothing I like better than leftover turkey sandwiches and manwhores on the day after Thanksgiving.

Is there a biological basis for pigs being depicted as greedy?

/\

I normally don't go shopping today, since the crowds are hell... but in honor of no shopping day I bought a yule tree, a tree stand, 24 shiny balls in green, silver, and red, and an extension cord. The tree looks beautiful.

Then, I went shopping in SL for the first time in at least 3 months. Bought some new hair (awesome Lash!), and a hot little black number (yay dion!).

Doing my part to make sure retail employees have a paycheck, and rewarding a couple of the really fine content creators in SL.

Feel free to sit in judgement while I go have a hot rum toddy (One Barrel Belizian rum.. omg, so yummy).

I find you guilty of excellent taste.

Whew! We're back after a five hour stroller trek across San Francisco. The early morning rain stopped around 10:00, allowing us to step out with the baby at about 11:30. We got off BART at the Powell station and made our way through the thousands of people packing the streets, shopping at Union Square. We walked up Powell, stopping to have lunch at a quiet out-of-the-way Mexican restaurant. The baby spent the meal looking at the colorful Aztec paintings on the sloped ceiling.

After lunch we walked up to the top of Nob Hill and relaxed at Huntington Park, watching the fountain and listening to the bells of (tax-exempt) Grace Cathedral. We met a great couple from Manhattan with an 11-week-old baby (Mathilde is 13 weeks old) and talked about the terror of the first four weeks and how things have now become much easier. After a quick walk around the neighborhood looking for possible new places to live, we headed back over the hill down to Market Street through the throngs of shoppers down to BART and back home.

In the end we had spent almost five hours out of the house on a beautiful San Francisco day with no shopping, no debt, and no stress. That's what BND is all about!

~Ulrika~

1. 31 degrees here with a brisk north wind.

2. <-- has no debt, credit card or otherwise.

3. Everyone I ran into today seemed to be in a good mood. One of the things I really love about Philly is how rarely I run into rude people. Even the guys at the local tree lot were friendly and charming. Oh.. and a cute guy in a van stuck his tongue out at me and smiled... I guess he caught me staring thinking, wow you're cute.

4. 5 hours with a baby and I would be insane. My offspring is grown and I love it.

Oh.. and woke up two hours later than normal, stretched out comfortably in hot red flannel sheets. Drank two cups of hot tea while still sluffing around in my slippers and flannels.

Beautiful smell of evergreen wafting through apartment and lovely hot rum drinks. Phone calls from friends.

Every day should be lovely, stress free, and with no debt. Lovely and stress-free are personal though.

Oh.. and if I have a personal soapbox.. don't get me started on credit card debt and preditory lending practices.

I love Philidelphia! It is a beautiful city.

Excellent! It sounds like it could be a great new thread, if you're so inclined.

~Ulrika~

I actually had to decide between Philly and SF when I moved back from Belize. My sister lives in San Fran and I have often visited. But Flipper MADE me move to Philly. Thanks Flip.

This is the reason Buy Nothing Day was created. Fighting at Wal-Mart for US$378 computers. Capitalism makes fools of its consumers.

http://www.cnn.com/video/player/player.html?url=/video/us/2005/11/25/vonat.fl.shop.fight.affl

~Ulrika~

/*** Shakes head - wonders why this stuff always happens in Florida

Anyhow - I decided not to leave the house this weekend to buy anything. There are a few things that I need but I decided that it was prudent to wait until after the hunched back nutters had returned to their caves hording their cutrate STUFF before I ventured back out.

Wallmart and any other stores that play into the day after Thanksgiving sale hysteria and the over commercialization of the holidays will not be a stores where I shop. Stores that abuse their employees, use offshore labour, are stores that I will not step into. I know it's small, not even a blip on the radar, no one will ever notice or care, least of all Wallmart, nevertheless, I'll know and even though I know I'm powerless, I can at least give myself the illusion that I have some small kernel of control.

I don't want to create hardship for hardworking retail clerks - I appreciate good help when I walk into a store. I go to stores that have good employees that help their customers. [Publix Supermarket - I love them - real check out clerks, people that bag your groceries and help you out to the car! No stupid loyalty card.]

However, if people keep going to these stores in droves the day after Thanksgiving and continue to perpetuate the pre-holiday hysteria, I think things will just continue to get more and more extreme.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/11/26/holiday.shopping.ap/

lookz like wal-mart can finance more of the same.

I missed BND because I was sick, can we have another one?

Most days for me are BND days. This was no exception. If you need to make a special day to ecourage people not to be mindless consumerist robots then they're already lost and you're wasting your time. I don't give christmas gifts, and I try to discourage anyone from giving them to me. I have no debt besides my house payment. I don't have any credit cards. I think they're evil and refuse to use them (so I pay almost 9% on my mortgage because I didn't have a credit history). I'm not sure which is more annoying... that people felt the need to create something like BND, or that there are people so moronic that they'd sell their own grandmother in trade for some plastic crap from the home shopping channel. How about we just have "live within your means" year next year.