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DK ‘doers’ help build No-Buy-Friday ‘clout’ with action & insight. These are their words [1]
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Date: 2025-05-15
Att: mikeymikey
DK ‘doers’ help build No-Buy-Friday ‘clout’ with action & insight. These are their words
Everyone on DK is deeply concerned about the state of our democracy, but it is inherently human to avoid responsibility at any cost. In fact, if we can find an excuse to shed it, we often will, even if doing so harms us. For reality dictates that the average person already struggles with what has been thrust upon them by life’s needs, desires and misfortunes — seeking less responsibilities not more.
When it comes to supporting NBF, priorities become totally skewed by our zombie addiction and many choose unwisely — abandoning responsibility in the ‘big box’ parking lot.
~~~
Life can be brutal. To keep us onboard, it lavishes us with sensory input to try to seduce us into enduring it. Ironically, both hardship and pleasure can lead to a richer life experience depending on how we process them. Managing this duality requires the prerequisite of balance as a means to benefiting from the full range of life’s offerings — to not only survive, but become stronger and more receptive in the process. Once on this path, struggle becomes motivational, fostering aggressive pro-action, well-tempered to avoid the emotional ‘quicksand’ of negative reactions. Such people accept what comes as quickly as possible and redirect their response toward searching for positive options and possible solutions.
This is common to nearly all other species save man. When I first heard of No-Buy-Friday, the last thing that would have occurred to me was to look for reasons why it wouldn’t succeed — other than the ‘grand caveat’ that humans themselves would sabotage it.
Instead, I immediately recognized its essential inherent values, and as my focus has remained there, my comprehension expands.
Each time I write about it, I gain more insight into its benefits and potentials. As I tend to it, the ‘NBFlower’ opens — offering to bear fruit.
Those who’ve read my diaries, frequently provide me with multiple insights, both as to the effect that NBF can have on us as consumers, as well as ways to discern its impact in what amounts to a media blackout of this vital information.
~~~
So for this diary, I’ve decided to quote once again from readers’s comments — this time to my last diary (link)
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/5/8/2321190/-No-Buy-Friday-Readers-on-how-it-s-changing-their-buying-habits-The-benefits-of-self-determination?
— presenting some of what they’ve generously shared by way of addressing the deeper understanding they’ve acquired through hands-on experience.
(Please note: Any editing is for brevity, with care taken not to alter the meaning of their thoughts, and as such, will be in quotation marks.
My running commentary is in parentheses.)
~~~
First up (though not the first to respond), ‘Mathy Kathy’ offered this:
“ ‘what does not get spent on Friday will just get spent on Thursday or Saturday’
Taking one day off from the treadmill helps to understand what impulse buying is at the ground level. Each time you stop jumping on the comfortable treadmill of an impulse buy, makes it easier to stick to necessities and luxuries.
An impulse buy is neither a necessity nor a luxury.
If you ever make the equation of money/life in real dollars and apply it to your real earnings, you would be able to understand how much life/hours you are spending on impulse. How much money can you earn in your life? How many hours will it take you to earn that money? How many hours do you actually have?
Necessities and luxuries are one thing, but impulse buying are the shopping vampires sucking your life/dollars and leaving a husk.
No Buy Friday is a stake in the heart of the impulse buy.”
‘A Citizen’ responded:
“Absolutely agreed. If BNF had no impact, we’d see spikes in purchasing on Thursdays and Saturdays, and if that were the case, the people who dismiss BNF would be citing that.
There are a lot of things that people purchase that they might not purchase at all if they aren’t shopping. Most people aren’t making a list and sticking to it tightly.”
(This expands on my supposition that if NBF was ineffectual we would hear about it from the media and the fact that we don’t is a positive indicator that ‘buynotts’ are impacting as intended.
I find MK’s remark tying ‘impulse buying’ to squandering moneys earned over a lifetime, particularly revealing, as it contextualizes the damage wrought by the ‘innocence’ of impulse.)
~~~
Further on ‘Kevo’ had this to offer:
“If NBF is helping people as a stepping stone to something more effective (effective meaning that it will affect the bottom line of said retailer), then I applaud it. If it just helps people learn about the benefits of delayed gratification, that is good too.”
(Any switch in normal behavioral patterns brings with it fresh perspectives. These can help direct, inform and refine our pursuit of self-improvement and through it, self-realization.)
~~~
‘thatpenquin’ wrote this:
“Not buying new stuff makes you notice unlikely places for free or used stuff, such as thrift stores, local libraries (library of things), community free tables, swap meets, maker spaces (to recreate the one plastic part to fix the broken item, so no need to replace it). My neighborhood (next to 2 universities) has lots of free stuff outside people’s front door especially around graduation time when people move.”
(Part of the big trouble we’re in as we suffer the consequences of rampant consumption, is the brainwashing that has taken place over decades promoting the superiority of ‘new’, until, for the majority of consumers, it has become the only viable option.
In many instances, this is simply not the case, as newly produced consumer products have often been incrementally degraded to preserve profit margin at the expense of quality and the consumer. Much of this ‘pre-waste’ is just shit to begin with, as modern consumers have had their judgement of quality debased in tandem with the conflation of ‘need’ with ‘want’. ‘Novelty’ has replaced product ‘soundness’.
‘Used’ is not only cheaper but often better. I currently eat off of handcrafted 18th century European faience plates, because I can buy them for about the same price as dishes from Williams and Sonoma.
…and from ‘ashowboat’ comes some sound advice:
“Thanks again for the No Buy Friday reminder. I am happy to see some great comments pointing out how NBF can be a steppingstone to better shopping. It is true that so much of our consumerism is impulse buying, that waiting a day to see if you really “need” that purchase, is helpful in itself. For those who want a bigger challenge, stop buying from all the “present-day robber barons” and Trump supporting corporations. I stopped using Amazon, Target, Walmart, and Meta. It does take me a bit longer to find a different vendor for the product I am looking for, but so far it has worked out fine. Give it a try, you don’t have to be 100% if it gets difficult.”
(I’ve mentioned a number of times that we are not seeking perfection, but rather simply asking people to do the best they can to conserve both world and personal resources. That is all it takes to move towards sustainability. To paraphrase ‘coolspring’: “When everyone does a little, a little does a lot.” )
~~~
‘Patricia13’ frequently (and with candid self-reflection), offers valuable insights she gains through personal engagement with this movement:
“Participating in No Buy Fridays has certainly made me more aware of how deeply the tentacles of consumption has permeated our lives. It's this awareness and consciously choosing to change that evolves the human race to a more sustainable way of living on the Earth.”
(This beautifully expresses the latent power of NBF to put us on a better path to a richer and more meaningful life experience.
By moving away from self-centered myopic immersion in material desire, our interaction with life gains a broader perspective encompassing other, much more worthwhile aspects of existence.
Self-determination is freedom, while obsessive compulsive materialism is slavery.)
~~~
‘Cornelius’ sets forth this gem of insightful reasoning:
“A counter to the argument that consumption level is fixed and will shift to other days is Sunday retail trading. Sunday opening was driven by business interests. One can safely assume that businesses did not lobby to increase their overheads on the expectation that total weekly spending would remain flat, and there’s evidence that Sunday opening did result in increased total sales.
If more days of shopping increase consumption it’s a perfectly reasonable expectation that fewer days of shopping result in less.”
(To an extent this undermines the shoddy reasoning behind the ‘Thursday or Saturday by default’ argument for shunning NBF.’ It also suggests that retail outlets and financial analysts keep a sharp eye on consumer buying, with the same attention given to stock market fluctuations. In both cases, a drop of any kind is noted and cause for concern.)
…and from ‘healejd’:
“If a unified act in the numbers that would send a message to the business conglomerates, even a small one, it would cause them and the government they bought out from under us (concern). It is a signal that the number of people who are united in purpose is significant.
I repeatedly preach that we must be united as a people to be able to change our situation and fight back as a people with peaceful resistance. No shop Fridays are a good start. I fear we will have to sacrifice much more in the very near future.
Up to us to stop it.”
(My response at the time was “…as for sacrifice, we are on the verge of sacrificing everything by insufficient action.
When it comes to survival, how much sacrifice is too much?
Fear and denial provide us with only delusions to hide behind :-( “
… and I will add that we are facing economic collapse, likely on a global scale.
How does the very minor “sacrifice” of participating in NBF stack up against that?
Furthermore, how does an action that has to potential to improve our lives exponentially, come under the label of ‘sacrifice’ other than as being the perspective of self-centered consumers.)
~~~
Dooey
“No Buy Friday is the best!!!!
If millions of Americans started buying lipstick on friday it would be all over the news — video journals on news shows on every network would have a piece on it.
Millions of Americans not spending money on a friday sends a deep message.
For the “it’s not enough” crowd.
Are you really gonna fat shame me for getting off the couch — I would be motivated by a “yes and” logic more than a “ no, but” logic.
Something is better than nothing — if you can do more — do more
So be happy about doing something!!!!
No buy Fridays are the best — may they lead us all to even bigger things”
(‘Silence can speak louder than words’, and the media pretty much remains silent. Fad and opinion drive a great deal of buying, and the press actively spreads these, dictating consumer behavior. From their perspective, NBF, as the antidote, does not work in these interests and needs to be suppressed.
As I mentioned in my previous diary, I did a Google search for statistics, reflecting the effect of NBF and came up with nothing. One of the ways to demoralize people is to ignore them and by cutting the fuel of positive information you can smother the fire. With a few exceptions, MSM has been seriously compromised by corporate interests which want NBF to go away.
Reinforcing the the effect of the vacuum of encouragement from the press, are the undermining excuses put forth in an effort to evade our collective responsibility to participate in and support any effort to undo the damage we’ve done.
These rationales are voiced to justify avoidance, by disparaging rather than encouraging participation, which, in our current situation should be showered with ‘the benefit of the doubt’.
We have so few options that we cannot afford to winnow them down by allowing ourselves to succumb to cynicism.)
~~~
Lastly ‘1954gg’ had this to say:
“I support NBF and have shared with friends and family so they are aware. I have expanded to being very mindful prior to any purchase. Need or want? How many do I already have? I find I don’t need much except essentials.
Also please check the maga shopping site (trump jr owns shares) public square.com (link) to avoid buying from businesses who love trump.”
(Because the MSM for the most part no longer has our best interests in mind and stopped having them decades ago regarding consumerism, this important avenue for raising general awareness of NBF is a non-starter. With the exception of ‘voices in the wilderness’ (such as diaries on DK), word of mouth, has become essential for spreading the word. The great purveyor in this regard is social media — but as always, this is a mixed blessing and tends to be tailored to the enticement of individual self-interest. When I was young, the success of a movie could be made or broken by word-of-mouth, and back then that literally meant ‘mono to mono’. Just as many of us text rather than ‘call’ on the phone, I’ve personally found there is less of tendency on a social level to speak one on one, particularly about matters that distress us. But this primitive method of communication can be powerful and effective - especially as it has now acquired the luster of novelty. )
https://www.thecooldown.com/green-business/jeff-bezos-private-jet-amazon/
The Cool Down Bezo’s 4th private jet 5/11/25
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