Lead Me Not into Temptation: The Specter of Conspicuous Consumption.

 

Americans love their junk.  It's not the junk that bothers me, it's the love.
- George Santayana

As a teenager, I prided myself on not buying every fashionable knickknack that appeared on the shelf at a clothing store.  I didn't blow away $60 for a pair of sneakers that would be threadbare in six months.  I purchased a brand of jeans (Levis) passable enough to not be mocked by my fashion conscious classmates.  Sure I was insulted and mocked for not being a proper materialistic drone, but I brushed it off.  I was not a victim of that pernicious bug known as (dreadful pipe organ hit in minor key) CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION.

The closest I got to being a conspicuous consumer was as a collector of comic books-- oops, GRAPHIC NOVELS, sorry.  I was a slave to titles such as Grendel; Concrete, the Living Monolith; Area 88... it was an eclectic mix of various genres.  I was immersed in these beautiful pocket universes where I could get away from mundanity.

The other kids in high school looked at my hobbies with contempt, but fuck 'em.  I'll never see them again.

Decades later, a sinister presence arrived that would jangle the keys of needful things that I could barely resist.

I speak of Amazon.com .

Clotheshorses, gadget freaks, comic aficionados, otaku... NONE were safe from Amazon's allure.  It is a vast digital warehouse - the brainchild of the pharaoh god emperor grand poobah Jeff Bezos.

Let's return to my story.  I am a connoisseur of various world mythologies, a film buff, an otaku, a Star Wars fan, a bookworm, and a lover of 70s prog rock among many other things.  And... just LOOK what Amazon has to offer me!

The Star Wars Lego Razor Crest with Mando and Baby Yoda!

The complete Robotech series on BluRay!

The Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex Complete DVD collection!

Rick Wakeman's The Six Wives of Henry VIII!

Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salò, The 120 Days of Sodom!

Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer's book Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth in paperback and hardcover!

Richard K. Morgan's Altered Carbon Trilogy... plus two graphic novels based on the trilogy!

Akira Kurosawa's Samurai Trilogy!

A fuckton of Audible books, 85% of which I haven't finished!

A fuckton of Kindle books, 95% of which I haven't finished!

Countless action figures from Star Wars, The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, and Fate/Grand Order!

The (nearly) complete hardcover volumes of the late Kentaro Miura's Berserk manga series!

ALL of which I have purchased!

So where does all this lead to?

An aside which will lead back to the topic at hand:  I have become a fan of the mobile gacha / anime series Fate/Grand Order.  Why?  That's because it's chock full of characters from mythology, history, and folklore.

My favorite F/GO character is Ishtar.

I've collected all sorts of tchotchkes based on that character.  Artwork, posters, action figures, and Ishtar centered anime.  I even bought the Ishtar character to play on the F/GO gacha game!

Now, if you paid attention to the above image of a scantily clad girl with raven dark hair hefting an oversized bow and arrow, let me explain what that is:  It's an 11" model of F/GO's Ishtar...

Its cost?  $399.33.

Nearly FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS.

And this hunk of plastic, this beautifully rendered hunk of plastic... called out to me in dulcet siren tones.

I fantasized about delicately peeling apart the delivery box, stripping off the package stuffing, cradling the 11" tall Sumerian gacha idol in my hands, and then mounting it on the makeshift shrine next to my figures of the bounty hunter Jango Fett, the Autobot Windblade, The Mandalorian warrior Sabine Wren, and Sutekh the death god from the Doctor Who episode "Pyramids of Mars."

Then reason grasped me by the collar and took me aside.

Do you really need this thing?  Have you finished putting together the 4" model of the same character?  Are you going to gaze at it rapturously for five minutes and then stuff it away somewhere?  Is it worth nearly four hundred dollars?  What are you going to do with it?  Honestly, now.  Are you going to bow and scrape before this thing like some bronze age idol?  Make votive offerings?  Parade it down the street like a statue of the Virgin Mary on a palanquin on the Feast of the Assumption?  Pull yourself together, man!

I cleared my head, and with a residual craving, refrained from hitting the "Buy Now" key on the Amazon page.

I proved to be weak willed enough to put it on my wish list, but by George, I didn't buy it.

The thing, though, is that Amazon has my number.  Whenever I log on looking for a gift for my wife or my mother, the insidious algorithm will offer me some merch, some thingamajig, some gewgaw for me to purchase impulsively, and ogle once it has been delivered.

And have you noticed how Prime delivery is at the top of all our shipping options now?  That tantalizing bait that seduces you into making a one to two day delivery purchase?  I think of the already overburdened workers at the Amazon warehouse busting their heavily taxed asses just to deliver some fetish (not the sexual kind) to our front doors in record time?  They offer other options, but they take longer to deliver and they're usually used items.  Used items?  Blech.

So, reason and compassion had won over conspicuous consumption - this time.  Now, however, I realize I have a monkey on my back.  A monkey that tries to cajole me into purchasing something for no profound reason.

Now, I too, must mind my wallet and pinch my pennies.  The specter of conspicuous consumption spreads its eerie, tenebrous wings wide.

- JJB