The Story of Stuff

A few weeks ago my friend Nassim sent a link around to The Story of Stuff. It's a twenty minute animated video about stuff, from extraction to production to market to home to disposal. It's well made and fun to watch but I'll be honest I thought 'doesn't everyone know this?", followed quickly by the discouraging thought that life ain't that simple.

But perhaps people don't know or rather don't think about it at all. Maybe if we did we wouldn't be so easily taken in by advertising and campaigns. There's an ad on Turkish television at the moment featuring an annoying girl in a stripy top posing as a doctor. Her patient sits in a gown looking worried while she looks at his x-ray. He has 10 ytl worth of points lodged in his chest, a situation brought about by buying lots of petrol from a particular petrol station on a particular credit card. So how can he be cured? 'Spend it and it'll pass' says the chirpy girl.

So having bought the most expensive petrol in the world (3.30 ytl/1.56 Euro/2.48 USD per litre!) the poor lad now has to go and spend even more money! It's all feeding back into the golden arrow. Perhaps he can spend his 10 ytl buying rice before the shortage hits in.