The Trap Of Things

AP PHOTO

AP PHOTO

Quite a few years ago, my dad had the idea that signing my grandpa up for a “fruit of the month” subscription would make for an excellent Christmas gift.

Each month, my grandpa would receive maybe five pounds of apples, three pounds of cherries or some other bulky fruit gift. He enjoyed it most of the time, though there were occasional mishaps when the fruits would arrive rotten or simply be something he wouldn’t want.

It was a cute gift, but my grandpa was not especially aggrieved when we let the subscription lapse after two years. It was a novelty that occasionally bore fruit, as it were, and he could always share the excess with his friends.

Anyway, I bring this up because Loot Crate — a monthly box subscription for geeks — and other, similar services are more popular than ever these days, and the whole enterprise just strikes me as very … wasteful.

A friend had gotten me a three-month subscription to Loot Crate for Christmas a while back, and I did get cool stuff. I now own a Space Invaders necktie (like, a men’s necktie), a very cool Gundam Wing shirt I had to give to my sister because it was too small for me, an extremely orange Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. ID badge, and a few comic books I still haven’t read.

I also got a ton of useless things I had no interest in (strange card games, mechanical rattling spiders, whimsical notebooks, etc.), so most of the crates went straight to the Salvation Army in the end.

This is the thing that gets me about curated swag boxes, regardless of whether they are selling fruits or Japanese snacks or nifty teen science projects: We’ve somehow figured out how to turn consumerism into something even more consumerist.

Pay $20 (or more!) a month to get a box full of things that you, in all likelihood, would not have chosen for yourself and won’t like half of. It’s buying for the sake of buying in its purest form.

The novelty of regular shopping has gotten old for us so now we want to just spend money and have other people send us things.

Things, things, things. Do we need so many more things in our lives?

Paige’s Pick of the Week:
Agent Carter

Rumor has it that one of Marvel’s best TV shows is facing cancellation, given dismal ratings and the fact that star Hayley Atwell has already committed to a different show. So catch up as fast as you can and tune in for its season (possibly series?) finale on Tuesday (March 1).

The show’s marvelous first season explored the aftermath of Captain America’s presumed death and the early roots of S.H.I.E.L.D., but season two has spent time diving into the occult as preparation, they say, for Doctor Strange.

OK, it’s not quite as good as the first go-round. But you’ll be hard-pressed to find a more dynamic group of leading ladies on TV, and it’s still one of Marvel’s finest TV products. (abc.com)

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