These last two weeks have been a doozy for me. I ended up with both parents at the hospital for unrelated
reasons, one scheduled and one emergency. Plans were thrown out the window, and then came all that anxiety
of medical emergencies. They are fine now, at home, recovering. But surprisingly this isn't what called my
attention this week, it was yet another pair of sneakers, or better, the story that I got myself tangled
involving them.
The Union LA x Fragment Jordan 85 High, extremely exclusive collaboration that would, somehow, be released
in my region, and online, too! I will give you a spoiler that I did not get them, but that's not the
interesting part. So, 10 AM on Friday, after a bad night's sleep, I excuse myself from work to try getting
them, it is a fight, and I am very aware the most likely outcome is nothing, and, indeed, it is nothing,
website is a failing mess, and I can't be fast enough. Tough luck. I take a second to be disappointed
and then go back to work, I have to make up for the time I was missing after all.
Then, after lunch, I make a mistake, I check the resale website for it, of course a bunch of people got
these to resell, it's the unfortunate nature of current sneaker culture (theme for a next blog post).
Despite my very clear position of no resale, I am tempted, really tempted, it is too expensive, but I keep
thinking "what if?", and "what's the harm in a few bad decisions?". But perhaps the interesting thing is
what I do then. I go to my private fedi account to post this, that I was considering, and,
embarrassingly, I go to talk with Gemini with it (yes I'm still falling for the propaganda, I'm sorry, I
enjoy having a response that looks decent generated to me, usually agreeing with me).
My heart is accelerated, I have dopamine coursing through my veins, until, poof, the shoe is gone, someone
else buys it, and the next one is even more expensive (now approaching double the price). Suddenly, I
have a change of heart, "What am I doing? Spending this much on a damn shoe? What is wrong with me?" is what
I think. I close the website, and I take 5 minutes, the dopamine crash is so hard I have literal tears
in my eyes, it is scary, and I feel like an addict, someone that has to buy something
because they "need to have it", something I never subscribed to.
This industry preys on FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), and indeed I fell for it, until those 5 minutes I took to
post it, to talk to the stupid chatbot, and someone buying it instead. As I said, I didn't get the sneakers,
but I promise there will be many more cool ones to buy (and to not buy), there is always a next one.
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