!Shopping guilt
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rawtext.club:70/~xiu
2023-02-21
Eora/Sydney, New South Wales
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Walked through Sydney yesterday with the objective of
doing some "utility shopping". AKA our attempt at doing
laundry failed and some stocks of essential clean clothes
may not last us until we make it home.

In recent years, spending time in retail precincts,
especially when surrounded by big-name single-brand
stores, has been giving me a deep sense of discomfort. A
sibling recently revealed they get this too, so I don't
feel as weird about it as I did in the early stages of
noticing the feeling.

Surrounded by shelves of nice things that used to bring
me joy, a little non-hallucinatory voice in my head
asks all sorts of unnerving questions:

 * How well fed was the person who made this product?

 * How much carbon did this cost?

 * What is the nicely copywritten "made with traceable
   cotton" label not telling me?

 * Other than adding a rainbow to their marketing, what
   is this brand actually contributing to the LGBTQI+
   movement?

This probably comes across like one big virtue signal,
but maybe it doesn't matter. It's on my mind and it's
troublesome, but I'd rather think on it than not.

Except that thinking about it so much in the store made
me forget to buy undies and so here we are.