Complex Numbers

You're Bad And You Should Feel Bad

Formula for annoying articles:

1) Pick something that everyone thinks is a good thing
2) Explain why that something is not a good thing

Like, say: 1) You may think you're helping the environment by recycling, 2) But in reality, the amount of energy used negates any benefit.

I don't know if that's true or not; I just pulled it out of my ass. But this one, I pulled off the internet from two years ago:

What Really Happens When You Donate Your Clothes—And Why It’s Bad  
Blame fast fashion

And it only gets worse from there.

Cleaning out the closet for most millennials goes like this: You slough through the items you haven’t worn in the past couple of months or longer. Pack them into a tote you don’t need but keep around perhaps for moments like this. Sort the pieces you think you can get some money from at Buffalo Exchange or Beacon’s Closet if you live in New York City. Then, you bring the rest to your local Goodwill or Salvation Army and donate it.

Honestly, they lost me at "cleaning out the closet;" never mind that everything else in that paragraph is completely irrelevant to me. I have clothes from 25 years ago that I still wear. (Not underwear; shut up.) This idea that you have to get rid of shit you haven't used in two months is a pernicious lie meant to force you to spend more money to Buy More Stuff.

What actually happens to your donated clothes is a very involved process with a lot of complicated layers, each worth taking the time to understand. Let’s start here: Contrary to popular (naive) belief, less than 20 percent of clothing donations sent to charities are actually resold at those charities.

...and?

Almost half of the donations will be exported and sold in developing countries, while the other half will be recycled into rags and household insulation.

...AND??

The U.S. sends away over a billion pounds of used clothing per year, and a lot of those excess textiles are sent to East African countries like Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda, each of which has received so much that some have proposed banning imported used clothing.

I'm still wrapping my head around the idea of not wearing an article of clothing until it wears out before getting rid of it as a rag.

To be fair, the article makes some mention of that later, but honestly, after this point, I just started skimming it. It doesn't help that their color choices absolutely suck, to say nothing of the implicit assumptions and writing style.

What you don’t want to do (ever, ever, ever) is throw away your clothes. You’ve probably already done that though, haven’t you? The average U.S. citizen throws away around 80 pounds of clothing and textiles annually.

Damn right I've done that. And I will continue to do that. Nowhere near 80 pounds a year, though. Not even close. No one is going to want to repurpose or recycle my used briefs.

Plus, at the end of the day, we’re the problem here. We’re the ones whose actions need to be questioned and challenged.

Because it's All Your Fault and You Should Be Ashamed of Yourself and It's In No Way The System's Fault.

No, "we" are not the problem, and "they" should stop trying to make us feel guilty about every goddamn little life choice. I swear it's all designed to keep us off-balance and neurotic so we'll be more susceptible to advertising.