I wrote this a few years ago and so now my views aren't
exactly the same as they were then, but this is still a good read.

The Mall Driven Society

The mall, what a marvelous place it is. The Mecca for vanity and superficiality of today’s youth. It’s a wonder that it hasn’t become the new “worship center” for Americans. Oh wait, it has. It’s the place that we can congregate together and worship what we Americans worship most of all, the almighty dollar. We spend all of our time trying to obtain it more and when we get it we try to get rid of it faster than we got it. Amazing isn’t it.

You look left, you look right, and what do you see? Store after store that are feeding into you girls’ insecurities of inadequacy in today’s media driven world, its no wonder that anorexia and suicide is up so much. How the heck are you to meet today’s standards with the bar so darn high!? You cant! All you can do is get what that witch next door has and pray that you can make it the week before it goes out of style.

I work in the mall, and I admit that I spend my money here, though not for the fashion, for that I might as well go to Wal Mart and save my money so I can spend what I saved on some crap that I don’t need somewhere else; but I sit and watch the people that come here and think “What the heck has happened to us!?” We are driven by the buck, something that has value only because Uncle Sam says it does. It sometimes makes me sick. If you ever sat and watched the people as they walked through the mall you would realize that the majority of the people are teenage girls (sometimes with their asshole boyfriends) looking for that thing that will complete them.

The teenage girl makes up the mass population of clothes shoppers in America. So why not target them at the mall so they spend Mommy and Daddy’s money on clothes that they will never wear after they leave this place. Use the media to tell them that they are too fat or too ugly and they need that tube top from The Gap or those new $100 shoes that were made in a Korean sweat shop just so they can think that they are pretty; cause we all know it’s how you look that matters and not who you are as a person.

Look there, know what I see, I am looking (while a brat kid is screaming into my ear) at some parents having their little daughter get her ears pierced. She looks to be about maybe 6-7 years old. Why are they subjecting her to that mortification!? Just so that she can feel grown up and think that she is cute? Makes sense doesn’t it? Allow her to fit in with her best friend the Jones’.

You ever listen to the music that they play at the mall? It’s none of this Frank Sinatra old people crap, or even the Elvis stuff, it’s music that the youth listen too, no more than a year old. I always wondered what the older patrons thought about it, did they like it? Did they think it is poison? What? And then I realized that it doesn’t matter what they think, they don’t spend any money here, their children and grandchildren do. So why the heck play old people music when they need to target the youth. That’s what matters in life. Making the youth happy! Giving them all that they want for no price. Parents divorce, give them what they want. Get good grades, give them what they want. Learn to use a Credit Card, give them what they want. It’s not Corporate America or the stock market that drives the economy, it’s the youth. They decided where the adults are going for vacation or what kind of car they are going to buy next year. Everything is dependent upon a person that doesn’t even know who Dow or Jones are. That is rather scary.

I bet that if the teens that are of voting age did vote they could get any dumb ass with a skate board and no high school diploma into the Presidential Office. But that would involve them doing something that is beyond their comprehension, “Thinking!” And knowing them, they rather spend their time at the mall.

Don’t ever listen to the “officials” that say that this generation is smarter that any before, that’s bull crap. Yea, we might have a few good men (or most likely women) in this bracket, but that number is drowned out by the lazy, stupid, dumb ass youth that think Sponge Bob Square Pants is the best TV show of all time. This generation is lazier, stupider, and the most self-absorbed of all times. I think that God should dig up Sodom and Gomorra and apologize.

I am a youth entering adulthood, but when I look back at whom I’ve left behind, it really scares me. I fear the fact that these people will be running the world in twenty years; people who are driven by the media and, the Mall.

As I was writing this I had an epiphany, I realized that some might feel offended about what I am writing, please understand that this is based on my reality, meaning what I see and interpret through my five senses. You have every right to interpret your reality your own way, but I just am showing you what I see through my world.

Yes, I am a hypocrite, I spend my money on worthless crap but I am to an American doing my duty, my duty to obey the corporation and buy what they tell me to. Buying stuff that I don’t need or want but doing so because the government says it will boost the economy. It is our responsibility to listen to Corporate America!

What am I talking about? I am referring to the countless Americans that every weekend spend their paycheck on something that will only bring them happiness until they get bored of it or until there is an upgrade to replace it just cause their told to by the media. I sit at the mall watching people come here to the stores doing their duty of keeping the economy going by buying that $50 purse that will be out of style before you get home or that 18 volt cordless drill that is only one volt better than the one you got for fathers’ day. I am talking about the fact that we Americans spend so much on entertainment and stuff that has no importance on our life while there are people thousand miles away who have never heard of The Gap or Calvin Klein none the less figure out why they are so important and what makes them worth more than your own children.

Corporate Whores! That’s what my friends and I call them, people that buy the $36 shirt just because it has the name Anchor Blue on it or the Nike symbol, they are paying obscene amounts for something that is cheap just to be a walking advertisement for someone else that you don’t even know. You’re paying to advertise someone else! There’s just something wrong with that. But I would bet that was the idea when companies started doing that. They would target the youth and tell them they would be cool with their brand of whatever, and so that everyone would know that they are wearing their brand of whatever they would put their logo on it so that everyone could see, thus creating advertisement and getting people to buy their crap, genius! With parents today getting their children whatever they want, this keeps the economy going, God Bless America! I am so darn proud to live in a country where the government doesn’t tell you what to do, the corporations do.

But who tells the corporations what to do? The youth! “Oh beautiful for spacious skies,…” Ain’t America great! Like I said, I love America, and you might think what I am saying is anti-American, but really I am just writing what I see, I have never been to another country so I don’t know if they have the same problems, probably, but I just am writing what I see here and my interpretations.

I work at a cart in the mall where we sell flip photos. The kind that you would get in a pack of baseball cards or in Cracker Jacks, but here you bring in your picture and we make them flip. They aren’t worth the price that we sell them for, they’re really not that impressive, but we still try and sell them.

One thing that I notice is that the people that like them are the same people that buy stuff they don’t need or really want, but they get them just cause it’s “cool!’ These people are what I call the simple minded; they are amused with the simplest things. They are the ones that spend hundreds each year to go to that mouse land. Ironically that’s whom marketers target, and they are what keeps the economy going.

But yet there are the other kind of people who are, well, I don’t know what to call them only that they look at what we sell and they realize like me it’s just another thing that has no importance in life and they move on. These are the people I respect, but it makes me wonder what they are doing at this superficial place, probably just looking at the other human beings and laughing at them, contemplating how much longer it will be before we exterminate ourselves due to stupidity.

Given, in retrospect, they are cute little novelty items, but only to the American people, who also think Sponge Bob Square Pants is cool. But my gripe really is the sense of vanity in the people that patron here. I mean half theses girls are dressed like hookers, wait, maybe they are. Then they are in fact real Corporate Whores!

I just saw something that sums up the average teenage girl. It was a teen girl, skinny, maybe 15, bare mid drift shirt, short shorts that look like pajamas, and on the butt of the short it said: “Spoiled”, if that doesn’t say it all then I don’t know what does. Of course you will ask, “What was I doing looking at her butt?” My answer is: if they are going to wear something that attracts attention to that region of their anatomy, then they shouldn’t complain when someone looks at it, shirt or shorts, whatever.

I don’t think that we all are bad people because we shop at the mall, just the reasons why we shop there is what I bring into question. Reason and motive, that’s what should be on trial.



back
This article is property of Daniel Martinez, all right reserved.