Why I Love My Buy Nothing Group (Part 2)
in which my spouse and I argue about whether this group is really anticapitalist or not
Hi all! This is Part 2 of a two-part essay; if you missed Part 1 you can read it here.
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Hang on a Minute
I don’t want to overstate the case. Actually buying nothing at all does feel like a fantasy to me most days. There are some necessities that cannot be found even within the treasure trove of my busy, dense urban neighborhood. And I do actually think a better world is one in which people still buy things, albeit a lot more slowly, more thoughtfully, and in ways that fully respect the dignity of every person who touched that object along the way. Additionally, my friends and family in small towns are quick to point out that Buy Nothing is much less popular and harder to use there, partly because in less densely populated areas, you’d have to travel farther to pick something up even if the gift-giver is technically in your same area.
There are other problems with Buy Nothing, too -- the main one being its reliance on Facebook, whose crimes are manyfold and whose founder has gone completely off the deep end. And some people have critiqued the hyper-local nature of the groups, because keeping the groups closed to one’s neighborhood means that the stuff in that neighborhood gets circulated around people who probably have a similar class bracket to each other. I think that’s a valid point - my neighborhood is more mixed-income than some, but the distribution is still limited by a somewhat arbitrary boundary.
Buy Nothing As an Alternative System
But, this is what I’m thinking, right? Lots of people in my network have shared this image from Choose Democracy as a guide for thinking about how to move forward in this new era.
Gift economies, to me, fall under that fourth category - building alternative systems. And I think the basic premise of gift economies is a really, really good one, and one that’s more challenging to the status quo than it might appear on the surface, even if it doesn’t cover every scenario.
Bezos and Musk and Trump want us to just buy and dump, buy and dump, buy and dump -- repeat forever, never thinking about the mountains of trash seeping into the water or blotting out the sky. They want us to forget about hurricanes and fires and floods. Or, better yet, they would prefer we sit and shop alone on our phones, in our air-conditioned homes to keep the ever-rising heat and anxiety at bay. Even if this model is imperfect, or not scalable, or what have you, I still smile and get a little dopamine rush every time I score something cool and useful, or give something cool and useful away to my neighbor. And I can tell the appetite is there - even in those small towns where Buy Nothing is less popping, my friends tell me the secondhand market is robust and thriving - it’s just that you find it in places like Facebook Marketplace, church yard sales, and people’s front lawns.
The (Trash) Elephant in the Room
One other complaint about Buy Nothing is that sometimes…people are clearly just trying to get rid of their trash instead of taking it to the dump. And that certainly is true.
This is going to sound kind of bitchy, but I truly mean this in a kind way… is it possible to be both kind and bitchy at the same time? Scrolling through Buy Nothing, the biggest thing that jumps out at me is the amount of absolute utter garbage we all seem to have. Broken plastic organizers for every conceivable type of object. Corporate t-shirts and tote bags from fundraisers. Cute but nonsensical things that we picked out of the $5 bin at Target while we were there for something else. Tiny useless things leaching microplastics into our blood and our brains, their consequences so much greater in aggregate than they are as individual items.
But you know something… the fact that sometimes people post their garbage doesn’t bother me as much as you might think. In a weird, roundabout way, I actually find it kind of hopeful?
I mean, who among us does not have at least one drawer, shelf, or closet full of miscellaneous shit destined for the landfill? At least this way, all that trash is getting aired out and exposed to the light of day.
Opening Buy Nothing is like opening my embarrassingly packed closet, full of things I don’t remember acquiring, or bits of random plastic that I don’t even know what they are, and trying to face it all with compassion instead of shame. Better yet, it feels like having an old friend stand there with a large glass of wine while I open that door, saying, “oh, that’s nothing - you should see my place.” On this page, people are acknowledging all this trash, taking the time to investigate and categorize each sparkly piece of garbage, and hoping that maybe this novelty Easter cookie plate actually might be another woman’s treasure.
Being Nicer to Our Trash
In other words, offering items on Buy Nothing, even if they have little value, feels like a completely different way of relating to our stuff. This is reflected in the group’s language. People don’t usually talk about “purging” or even “decluttering” in their posts, but instead use much gentler words like “gifting” and “rehoming”. When we “rehome” something instead of “chucking” it, we’re already treating it with far more care and attention than its manufacturers ever imagined.
And sure, sometimes people post stuff that is probably beyond saving - things that are really quite broken and not easily restored. But when that happens, people tend to be honest about it and treat it with their typical Philly candor (“it’s pretty fucked ngl, but maybe somebody’s handy?”).
In Conclusion: When Things Are Not Working (e.g. climate crisis, inflation, billionaire sucking our blood), I Humbly Suggest That We Try Something Else (e.g. get cool stuff secondhand for free from our neighbors)
Here’s the thing. I’m tired of feeling hopeless and run down, and like my only choice is just to be a good little capitalist consumer. I don’t want to constantly shell out for shit that breaks in less than a year. I want change. I’m ready for things to feel different, and I’m confident that others are, too.
I’m on Buy Nothing because I want a livable climate future and I dislike further enriching corporations, but the beautiful thing is that you don’t HAVE to care about either of those things to join. Maybe you just want to save a little money, or meet your neighbors, or simply not have to spend your precious time on Earth shopping around for The Perfect Product. I think many people want a different relationship to our stuff, and a different relationship to the corporations peddling it to us. And Buy Nothing, for its flaws, makes an earnest attempt to offer something I have been absolutely starved for the last couple of years - an earnest, openhearted attempt at providing a clear, simple, alternative solution to a problem we all have. We all need stuff from time to time (most of us, anyway). And we all need to get rid of stuff (at least many of us do). How do we do that ethically? Can we take it one step further - can we do it ethically and easily?
I love that it gets me thinking about alternative systems in general - maybe it gets you thinking, too even if this isn’t the exact alternative that you would choose. Like an antibiotic painstakingly cultivated under a microscope, submitting to test after test, I think we have to keep trying out these ideas on a small scale, where we live, because one day they might make up some of the ties that keep us together when everything else is falling apart. We have to try, anyway. I don’t like the alternative.