Bring Back Novelty!

Can Gatekeeping Consumption Make Life Fun Again?

There is a very real issue we all need to talk about. It is HOW TO HAVE FUN AGAIN! Yes, you should interpret those capitals as me yelling at you. I’m not a yeller, which makes me hope that my use of capitals will be taken seriously! (Lol) The one thing I wish I could scream from the rooftops is that everyone needs to loosen up and try to reclaim some of the joy that life once had.

Whether we like it or not, what we buy speaks to how we see and exist in the world. It shouldn’t, but it does. So, this article is going to center around consumerism and its relation to the death spiral of mundanity (and anger) that mainstream society seems to be caught in.

Sad beige moms, mass-produced corporate art prints, luxury homes that look more like futuristic prisons than anything else… The majority of things available to the middle-class masses are so fucking boring.

My proposal is that we need to bring back gatekeeping of taste — not everything needs to appeal to everyone. The desire to appeal to the largest number of people possible is why companies have become so homogeneous and boring. Have you walked into a mall lately? As someone who is/was trying to take pictures of every mall in western Canada (and is about 90% complete), I have photographic proof that they all look the same! The only store that still has a “unique” aesthetic is Hot Topic, but that store is full of dated merch that reference dead memes from 20 years ago. I’ll say it again for the kids in the back: not everything needs to appeal to everyone!

I desperately want more of whatever this is.

I am old enough to remember the days before online shopping, back when people waited in line for Boxing Day sales (basically Canadian Black Friday, before Black Friday was a thing). Or traveled to the next city over — or heck, sometimes even across the US border — to track down things they wanted to buy. Shopping used to be fun! There was a sense of novelty to it. And don’t come at me with “we’re in a recession” as the excuse. I definitely didn’t have money during those times, yet that somehow made the thrill of the hunt more, well, thrilling. I wanted to be sure I was buying something I truly wanted. Also, tight times breed innovation.

Off the top of my head, here are some ways we can restore a sense of fun and childlike whimsy through consumerism:

Toys in protein powder: Manufacturers should start adding toys to protein powders, just like our favorite childhood cereals. Alternatively, we can add our own! Even more alternatively, maybe we just need to get our friends/roommates/spouse to start hiding toys in our food so we’re constantly surprised. Or get inebriated and hide them ourselves.

Bring back “tacky” corporate aesthetics like Memphis Design (90s geometric designs and squiggly designs) and Global Village (the style that, ironically, all boring coffee shops used to have). Or invent something new.

Add bubble machines to vape pens: If I’m going to be stuck behind someone making a gross faux-cotton candy scented cloud, then at least make it feel whimsical.

Develop that form of psychosis that makes you feel like you’re watching your life play out like a TV show! Alternatively, get a traumatic brain injury so that you need to relearn everything and can recapture that sense of wonder you had as a child.

Or… we can all stop buying things for a while, as well as following social media trends and choose to exist in whichever way brings us joy, and just loosen up a bit. Whatever works for you.

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