Aph Canada: Shit!
Aph France: Language!
Aph Canada: Merde!
Aph France: That’s better
transcription by @jub3r7
"This is getting ridiculous now. Where did you find this contraption? How did you build it? You're not really rolling them straight :/ I'm not sure I like this at all, I don't like the noise. See what's the point! That didn't break with the contraption, so it doesn't coun- I liked that one. That one was neat and clean. It was a clean break. Don't like the noise - she was with chil- you're BEATING the child! It's just sick. It's twisted - HE was with child. Okay. Something about this is... where are these children coming from? Seems unnecessary that they're all pregnant. Just straight beating that Pepsi and their plastic. I don't like this - it's SADISTIC. This is sadistic. I don't - they're SPRITZING me!" *from other video, a man's voice, vaguely sounding like a moan: oooooooooh. oohhhh* lady: "I'm sorry. What was that?" *last bottle falls* (with disappointment) "No."
Imagine if Hannibal gets a season 4 and it's as fluffy, fanservicey, meandering and plotless as Good Omens season 2. The whole plot is hannigram trying and failing to get Clarice and her roommate what's her name to fall in love or some shit similar. Jack crawford turns up naked with amnesia and ends up running away with freddie lounds idek. Mads Mikkelsen apology dance but it's a whole scene and the choreo goes hard as fuck. And hannigram full p*netration on screen at least once per episode. Coming 2026 exclusively on tubi. Manifesting this 🙏
I *knew* that companies have been trying to shift blame for damage to the environment onto regular people's buying habits, but it has still somehow been a shock to research a topic and find the internet totally dominated by the narrative that "consumerism" and the desire to buy more stuff is entirely responsible for pollution and landfill waste, instead of factors such as planned obsolescence.
It's insidious—this widespread idea that average people are too greedy, and that's what fuels climate change and pollution. Not greedy companies.
"Consumers shop for clothes to stay on-trend and throw away perfectly good old clothes." "Consumers only wear clothes a few times before throwing them away." "A huge amount of landfill waste comes from clothing that consumers throw out." "Consumers replace their wardrobes arbitrarily to stay on-trend." "Consumer demand for 'fast fashion' is rising spite of the environmental impacts."
Statements like this make it sound like regular people want to buy and waste vast amounts of resources, and normal people's unchecked addiction to shopping is causing environmental devastation. It's horribly misleading when products are being deliberately designed to break or wear out within one or two years and to be impossible to repair.
Instead of "Americans are buying way more clothes than they did 20 years ago, causing lots of landfill waste!"
Where are the articles entitled "Clothing brands are selling poorly-made clothes that have to be replaced much more often than 20 years ago, causing lots of landfill waste!"
Then note that fast fashion is decoupled from the demand economy. What this means is that clothing items are generated based on algorithms determined by corporations. They’re not driven by current demand, or consumption, or consumer desire: they’re driven by prediction of how much the corporation can sell. Because the items are practically worthless, the corporation risks little by generating extra/unwanted items. So if they generate 10,000 unwanted tops, they can simply destroy them again and send them to landfill. They don’t have any motivation to recycle, donate, or give away these items. It does not matter if 15 more people swear to give up fast fashion and -15 items are purchased. The machine of fast fashion operates independently of consumer demand, because its settings are set to increasing profit, not what people claim to want or what’s good for their workers or what’s good for the earth.
If your goal is to live a better and more connected life - a life that will be resilient and joyful in the face of coming changes - you absolutely can, should and must avoid fast fashion. Do it for your soul. Do it for your ethics. Do it because an informed, caring person cannot do anything else. Do it because wearing these items would make you feel ill. That is what I, and my household, do. It is good for us, but does not liberate you. I do not call it activism, but a way of living in the world.
But if your goal is to break the machine, you cannot break a machine whose settings are “infinite profit” by pressing on levers marked “consumer demand.” Those levers aren’t even connected to the economic machine. It operates on separate principles. I’ve written about this before: there are plenty of ways to break the machine, but “declining to interact with it” is not activism and won’t kill it.
In science policy we do a lot of stakeholder mapping, which really shows where power lies, and here’s a proposed European strategy for forcing fast fashion into the circular economy. Interestingly, as with many circular economy things, the levers involved include end-of-life pressures: if you stop textile manufacturers from burning their surplus items for their own convenience, they’ll have to find other solutions. If the countries being used as dumping grounds for textile waste effectively organise and resist, it will be less economical to be wasteful. This is how you influence economies: cut down the current systems that insulate corporations and allow for infinite growth on a finite planet.
Consumers certainly have a role to play, but in my opinion, this role isn’t as easy and smug as buying/not-buying fast fashion. Instead, consumers must grapple with and influence material desire. Why is it so nice to buy new things, and how can we change that? Can you get those feelings from a community clothes swap, or would we actually be happier if our psychology just hated the whole concept of new clothes? For people who enjoy bullying: instead of bullying people for buying clothes, which is cruel and unkind, why not bully the entire concept of consumption? In the healed world, we won’t be entertained by watching a video of someone opening a large bag of new clothing; we can start living in that world today.
Further, consumer desires actually do influence investors. It’s less sexy but involves more money being moved around. Ideally the healed world won’t involve markets that float untethered on the power of random beliefs, but if you’re into it for now, you might as well look into how the complex network of investment keeps undesirable business practices afloat, how much that relies of delicate forces of confidence, and how quickly industry pivots to follow investors. Long story short, investors have more money than you do, but only because of psychology.
In conclusion, these machines are complex and don’t care much about your $5. This is neither a reason to despair, or to run out and buy Primark. It is a reason to become educated.
Alternatively, you could simply have a Revolution and break all of this down, which would be a fascinating change and would certainly be something new.
What I find frustrating about these discussions is that no one wants to mention the other reason why people buy fast fashion - price.
I would love to spend £20 on a good quality t-shirt that will last a decade if not longer, but I don't have £20. I buy what I can from charity and second hand stores, but what's available is limited and rarely in my size. I can get a plain t-shirt that fits well and is made from recycled materials at Primark for £2 to £5
Same with having kids. They grow fast, and some of us don't have the money or storage space (or certainty that we'll be living in the same place in a month let alone a year), so you can't invest in clothing that grandkids and great grandkids will potentially wear. Fast fashion will kit out your child in t-shirt and joggers that will last until their next growth spurt for less than £5, and when every penny counts that is a lifesaver
Vimes Boots Theory is so accurate, y'all.
Imagine if Hannibal gets a season 4 and it's as fluffy, fanservicey, meandering and plotless as Good Omens season 2. The whole plot is hannigram trying and failing to get Clarice and her roommate what's her name to fall in love or some shit similar. Jack crawford turns up naked with amnesia and ends up running away with freddie lounds idek. Mads Mikkelsen apology dance but it's a whole scene and the choreo goes hard as fuck. And hannigram full p*netration on screen at least once per episode. Coming 2026 exclusively on tubi. Manifesting this 🙏
Somebody made a Steam game where you can really play the fake games from those mobile game ads
"Will you vow to watch over the children of the world, to guard them with your life? Their hopes, their wishes, their dreams? For they are all that we have, all that we are, and all that we will ever be."
RISE OF THE GUARDIANS (2012) dir. Peter Ramsey