Reply #32: It doesn't. It just gives people a false sense of virtue

[Berry Cool]

so they don't have to go through the possibly painful process of actually buying less. Period.

It also seems that every year, a bunch of people on DU think they are being amusing and clever by recommending that other people protest a commercialized holiday season by filling up their carts with stuff, then leaving them behind in the store. What a way to "stick it to The Man," huh?Well...no. You're not sticking it to The Man. You're sticking it to the minimum-wage worker who has to put away everything you plied in the cart in your slacktivist pranker glee. Chances are they'll have to stay after the hour they were originally going to get out of work to help put things away...and not get paid overtime for it, either. Yeah. You sure showed THEM.

Please, if you want to protest commercialism, do it a useful, meaningful way...just buy less.