With a looming iron-grip marketers and advertisers have over pretty much anything in their reach, why aren’t the masses collectively making harassment campaigns to them?

I think if we actively told every single marketer off in a prolonged effort, they’d get a hint as to how much of their commercialism we don’t need shoved down our throats.

  • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.worldEnglish
    124·
    7 hours ago

    I’m increasingly of the opinion that the only way to stop the excesses of capitalism is with a concerted effort to gum up the works, one business at a time, from most to least evil.

    Everyone who has worked retail knows how to waste the company’s time, money, and effort.

    Let’s say it’s a chain of megamarts:

    Pick a busy day. Load up a cart with rotisserie chickens, raw meat, and ice cream, and abandon it in the garden center. Window shop and ask as many questions as possible of every employee you encounter. Ask dumb questions. Ask what the battery life on a pair of wired headphones is. Ask how many eggs are in a dozen. How do they know the chicken is boneless? Have they looked? Don’t buy anything you ask all the questions about. Buy only loss leaders. Pay with a combination of loose change, a check, and a card you know will decline at the end. “Oh wait I need just one more thing. I’ll just be a second!” then leave through the garden center. Go to the automotive center and talk to them about financing a large tire purchase. Back out at the last second. Get paint mixed and then wander off absentmindedly while they’re mixing it. Pretend to be interested in signing up for their store credit card. There are so many time wasting questions you can ask about a credit card. And so many ways to fill out a form incorrectly so it’s useless. Try to pay with any coupon but one that you know will work. Expired coupons. Coupons for other stores. Coupons from defunct stores. Coupons from Arby’s. Chuck E Cheese tokens. Gift certificates from that one comic book shop across town that’s run by a sweet old man that still uses gift certificates because he’s old fashioned that way. Traveler’s cheques. Ask if your membership card from their direct competitor entitles you to any discounts. If you speak a language other than English, that is now your only language. You understand English only when it is disadvantageous to the company for you to do so.

    Time is money. Waste their money. And since this is being done to one business at a time, their competitors don’t have an entire movement of people acting like plausibly deniable problem customers dragging them down. You’re distorting the margin at which they can operate. If they raise prices while it takes forever to buy anything in the stores, well, none of their competitors have that problem.

    Yet.

    Leave glowing reviews of every low-level employee you encounter. Tip them. Make up a few employees and give them glowing reviews. Leave scathing reviews of anyone in management you encounter.