One day, while walking the aisles of a local discount outlet, I was vouchsafed a vision. It was triggered by the sight of a five-gallon jar of maraschino cherries.
The jar was covered with a not-so-thin layer of dust. The jar’s contents swam in a liquid that looked like the stuff you see in a dentist’s office after an especially painful extraction.
The maraschinos themselves appeared to be growing eyes. Or perhaps they were simply budding. Whatever the cause of the transformations these doctored bits of fruit were undergoing, its outward signs were pockets of darkness and strangely shaped protuberances I could swear moved to follow me as I passed.
Such apprehensions notwithstanding, it occurred to me as I stood there stone stock still in that discount store aisle, contemplating a five-gallon jar of dyed cherries that no sane person on this planet would purchase under any circumstances, that there was a message in this merchandise—a message that it was incumbent upon me, nay, imperative for me to fathom and disseminate.
In the fullness of time I have come to understand this Metaphor Of The Maraschinos, and to view it as a guiding principle for countless people like myself who have become part of America’s great post-asset generation. The lesson here is the joy to be derived from faux shopping.
Faux shopping is shopping with no intention of buying, with a focus on items no sensible person would want to buy, and with a keen awareness of the money saved in the process of not making an actual purchase. It is done for the sheer pleasure of transcending mindless consumption. A pleasure compounded by the realization that these transactions do not oblige you to trade a given number of hours at a job you detest in order to acquire goods you do not really want.
Faux shopping is never having to say you are sorry to yourself, to others, or to the bank that issues your credit cards. Through the act of regaining control over your own small share of the marketplace from the product makers and pitchmen who currently dominate in this realm, faux shopping also gives new meaning to Shelley’s poetic insight about society’s underlings getting back a little bit of their own: "...the hand that mocked them and the heart that fed."
Compare the happiness attainable from traditional shopping, and from faux shopping outings. The number of items traditional shoppers can purchase is limited by cash in-pocket, personal credit rating, space in the car to cart goods home, and space at home once you get the goods there. The number of items you can afford not to buy on a faux shopping junket, however, is limitless, and the encumbrances that come in train with carting and siting this merchandise nonexistent.
Whether one faux shops in nothing-under-a-buck schlock parlors or upscale Fifth Avenue emporia, in specialty shops or front-line department stores, opportunities to revel in a smug sense of non-acquisitive superiority, and to gloat about putting one’s own financial well-being above that of local retailers, are immense. These feelings become especially acute around the holiday shopping season.
Consider what faux shoppers are not actually buying this year. Software that works to substitute sterile information for lively intelligence. Neck ties you wouldn’t use to wrap the trash if they turned up in your own holiday stocking. CD collections of people (and entire families) you never need to hear singing their favorite Christmas carols. Books of cartoons that weren’t funny when they first appeared in a daily newspaper two years earlier. Gift certificates that only encourage perpetuation of traditional bad shopping habits.
The contemporary marketplace is awash with five-gallon jars of maraschino cherry equivalents. Gather them up in your mind. Tally the savings realized by not buying them. Apply the extra time generated by this negative acquisition capital to a good book from the public library, a walk in the park, some sweet nothing leisure with a friend or loved one.
And don’t worry about returns. Faux shoppers don’t make them. They get them.
