{"id":388,"date":"2025-07-11T00:17:50","date_gmt":"2025-07-11T00:17:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/birthdayvoucher.com\/?p=388"},"modified":"2025-07-13T14:53:16","modified_gmt":"2025-07-13T14:53:16","slug":"welcome-to-prime-day-when-thousands-of-product-thumbnails-blur-together-to-form-a-giant-pile-of-garbage-anna-spargo-ryan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/birthdayvoucher.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/11\/welcome-to-prime-day-when-thousands-of-product-thumbnails-blur-together-to-form-a-giant-pile-of-garbage-anna-spargo-ryan\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome to Prime Day, when thousands of product thumbnails blur together to form a giant pile of garbage | Anna Spargo-Ryan"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I\u2019m a simple girl. My idea of fun is an annual event in which people are crushed in pursuit of half-price Christmas decorations. But those days have passed. Welcome to the era of the always-on sale.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re into capitalist nightmares, you might like EOFY sales, Oh No We Forgot EOFY sales, SOFY sales, Father\u2019s Day sales, AFL grand final sales, and \u201cmy boss doesn\u2019t want me to send this email\u201d sales. Then we go headlong into Australia\u2019s Black Friday sales, which start around the beginning of November and last until January, as is tradition (though not ours).<\/p>\n

In fact, there is no longer a reason to leave anything<\/em> on the shelf. Every minute of every day, something is marked down and waiting for your card details, as long as you\u2019re willing to compromise your moral and ethical obligations to the planet and those who live here. Full price is dead, long live the sale.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re now in the throes of Prime Day, an event that defies the laws of time and space to inhabit a full week and is expected to generate US$23bn in sales for Amazon and its third-party sellers<\/a>. For a mere 168 continuous hours, shoppers are given the option to support a global capitalist behemoth as it asks the question, \u201cDo you need a walking desk, cat food and a 30-pack of crew socks?\u201d To which we reply, \u201cYes but only if you massively accelerate climate change by delivering it tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

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I remember a time when Prime Day (which 10 years ago lasted only 24 hours, like human days) was duly criticised by the press<\/a>, at least in this country. Australia of old was proud of its anti-capitalist image. We didn\u2019t need newfangled gear with \u201cbatteries\u201d and \u201cscreens\u201d. We wore the socks our grandmother gave us on our 10th birthday. When our kettle broke, we went to the shed and taped it up again.<\/p>\n

No longer. TikTokers, YouTubers, bloggers and other taste makers \u2013 including serious news outlets \u2013 have jumped on the chance to scour Amazon\u2019s endless library of cheap labour to find the best deals. It\u2019s running ads like editorial. Prime Day isn\u2019t just a sale, it\u2019s fodder for desperate content factories \u2013 again, including serious news outlets \u2013 looking for literally any topic that could become clicks that become Meta revenue that becomes sweet affiliate link cash.<\/p>\n

Now, for the everyman, there\u2019s no denying the bargains. Everything you could never need is here. Phones. Perfumes. TVs. Baby wipes. Scrolling the long, long, long \u2013 long long long \u2013 list of sale items is overwhelming to the point of delirium. Luckily, if you can\u2019t decide what to buy, Amazon\u2019s personal assistant, Alexa+, can make suggestions. Your phone? Too slow! Your treadmill? Too bulky! Your energy drinks? Not bulky enough! And where does your old stuff go? Who cares!<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to criticise Amazon. It pays little tax<\/a>. In 2023 its US warehouse workers were allegedly injured on average twice as often as its competitors. Almost a hundred private planes flew into Jeff Bezos\u2019s Venetian wedding<\/a>. It\u2019s an enormous contributor to the global waste problem \u2013 according to one source<\/a>, to the tune of 599m pounds of plastic packaging waste in a single year.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s Prime Day \u2013 week, year \u2013 in a nutshell. A wasteful company wastes people\u2019s money to generate more waste. Thousands of product thumbnails gradually blur together to form one giant garbage pile floating in the Pacific Ocean (if you\u2019re not sure what that is, there are books about it on Amazon).<\/p>\n

High-income countries \u2013 like the US and Australia, where it\u2019s possible to get same-day delivery yoga pants \u2013 produce more than one-third of the world\u2019s waste. Globally, over the next 25 years municipal solid waste, like homewares, clothes and electronics, are expected to increase to 3.4bn tonnes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Prime Day has no regard for these numbers. It\u2019s a crude marketplace in the spirit of perpetually closing-down rug shops and video game stores<\/a>. It\u2019s designed to bamboozle. It disguises itself as a social event, encouraging us to plan our wishlists, share our carts with friends and post haul videos to prove the sickness consumed us. It\u2019s built to confuse us into thinking we need a second air fryer or a hedge trimmer or an automated bird feeder. And it insults us if we disagree: oh human, just let our AI shop for you.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not a sale prude. I live for the dopamine hit of a bargain. My postie knows me by name and parcel frequency. And, full disclosure: I have an Amazon account and occasionally order sports bras and nail polish. But I cannot, as the youth say, fuck with the heavy-handed push towards junk I don\u2019t need to replace stuff I never wanted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m a simple girl. My idea of fun is an annual event in which people are crushed in pursuit of half-price Christmas decorations. But those [Read More…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":390,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-make-money"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/birthdayvoucher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/birthdayvoucher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/birthdayvoucher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birthdayvoucher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birthdayvoucher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/birthdayvoucher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":391,"href":"https:\/\/birthdayvoucher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions\/391"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birthdayvoucher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/birthdayvoucher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birthdayvoucher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birthdayvoucher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}