America: the country where it is laughingly easy to make ridiculous amounts of money off of merchandise which serves no functional purpose other than a Darwinian exchange of funds.
And I’m not just talking about Japanese children’s toys either.
Exhibit A: Vampires.
What precisely are vampires? Well, that depends on who you ask. Every society in history has some form of Vampiric entity, an immortal and at least partially humanoid creature that feeds off of mankind like an overgrown, evil parasite. America, being the great “melting pot” of cultures, where myths and legends of the old country are twisted to suit the purposes of popular culture, has created any number of different vampires--from Anne Rice, to Christopher Pike, to Joss Whedon--which bear only the most superficial similarities to one another. And then there are the other vampires: the ones who wander college campuses and public parks every weekend (and some week nights), a society unto themselves. They are the vampires we love to fear and revile, and some of them spend ungodly amounts of money for the privilege. After all, it simply wouldn’t do to have those vampires wandering around without rules. These are people who wish every so often to escape the rigors of their place in society in favor of the rigors of another place in another society, one in which death (even if it is only of a character) is certain if you slip up. So whomever made up said rules is making millions off of the misfits and theater freaks hoping to find out if their Malkavian can have Viscitude and what they have to do to reach True Faith. And as soon as any one person has managed to catch up on all the books and rules out there, the creators come out with another edition.
Exhibit B: The Tourist Trap.
You’re living in one. Shops all up and down every beach in existence are selling shells. They’re selling shells glued together to look like frogs, and shells painted to look like beach scenes, and shells made of plastic that aren’t even really SHELLS, when all anyone really has to do is go out on the beach early enough to get the shells before the stores gather them all up. Or maybe you don’t want shells. Maybe you want t-shirts. They’ve got t-shirts galore. T-shirts that no sane, sober person would ever actually wear in public unless they’re looking to offend as many people as possible or make a very particular statement (that statement being: look at me! I bought this t-shirt in a tourist trap!). All over the country, you can buy all sorts of useless kitsch, from soap dishes with religious phrases and names of places engraved on them, or back scratchers shaped like small plastic hands, with religious phrases and names of places engraved on them. Or you can buy bottles of dirt with, you guessed it, religious phrases and names of places engraved on them. Or, if you’re really there for something you can’t get anywhere else (or the very least, any where other than a tourist trap), you can buy a bag of “donut seeds”. Its a plastic bag with a little tag on it, filled with 10-12 cheerios. Only in the US.
Exhibit C: Hot Topic
Okay, I should say that I love Hot Topic. I spend way too much money there on t-shirts and paraphanalia. However, that doesn’t keep me from realizing that they are making all sorts of mad money off of the nostalgia of people who are not quite old enough to really qualify being nostalgic. But how many people do you know who can resist buying t-shirts with classic care bears, star wars and transformers images on them? I know I can’t, and from the compliments I’ve gotten on my Jem and the Misfits shirt, I’m certain many of you can’t either. Not only that, you don’t actually have to travel anywhere to get them; they’re online. How scary is that?
How much money do you spend yearly on things that you, to be quite honest, have no actual need for? How much money could you save by simply sticking to the necessities of life? Not, of course, that that matters. Odds are, you’re going to spend the money anyway. Might as well spend it on something unique, something you can’t get anywhere else. Like Miracle Dirt.
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