It’s Consumerism Gone Mad (Naked City)

A cold wind blew through the dark city street as we bedded down for the night, a steady fall of rain turning our blankets and sleeping bags into soggy sponges. Hundreds more had suddenly joined us, their faces a mixture of anticipation, fatigue and possible disappointment. We hadn’t eaten for what seemed like an eternity and our stomachs seemed horribly empty. As the morning broke, the crowd became restless, pushing and shoving as they moved towards a single doorway. Suddenly all hell broke out as the doors opened for a much needed life saver – a few scraps of bread and a bottle of clean water?

Could this be a scene in Ukraine, Lebanon, Gaza or any other deeply troubled war zone around the world? Nope. Just a bunch of consumer driven hopefuls queuing for a limited edition watch. We all saw it on the news last week as punters jostled outside Swatch stores worldwide to grab a supposedly discounted pocket watch from the Audemars Piguet x Swatch ‘Royal Pop’ collection, priced between A$630 and A$670.

In Sydney it’s estimated a thousand or more lined up outside a Pitt St store to snag this much vaunted ‘bargain’, many of them scalpers looking to resell on eBay and the likes at heavily inflated process. We saw some initial argy bargy but nothing like the madness in other international cities where arrests took place and stores were forced to close prematurely.

The last time we witnessed that kind of consumer frenzy was probably during Covid when supermarket shoppers fought over rolls of toilet paper. There was even an episode where one woman in a Woolworths pulled a knife on another shopper and six police arrived to break up the melee. Macquarie University even published a research item titled “The psychology behind the panic buying of toilet paper during the Covid 19 outbreak”. Surely the time is right for a similar analysis “Why shoppers risk hypothermia in search of an overpriced plastic watch?”.

Meanwhile in that bastion of capitalism gone mad, the long awaited ‘Trump’ phone is finally being distributed to the 600,000 MAGA supporters who forked out a $100 deposit on the $500 ‘made in the USA’ product. For a while it looked like they had all done their deposits when the phones failed to appear and the fine print in the contract indicated that all down payments were non refundable.

The Trump gold phone would of course be the perfect companion for the $60 Trump bible which appeared a few years ago – printed of course in the good old USA? Wrong again, the bibles were printed in China although they did receive the President’s exclusive blessing and anointment on home soil. Let’s hope the CIA and FBI checked them for secretly implanted listening devices, cunningly secreted by the Chinese in a tiny microchip between the Old and New testaments.

Like the Trump bible, the Trump gold phone is marketed as ‘made in the USA’ but you guessed it, it’s actually a Chinese cheapie repackaged in the USA with a coating of gold paint and a transfer of the stars and stripes. It’s does however come with an already installed app for Trump’s ‘Truth Social’, the quickest way to get you daily dose of psychotic bullshit.

So what next to capture the imagination and compulsions of consumers worldwide, resulting in a massive shortage of sleeping bags due to the abundance of overnight campers? Let’s put snappy watches and groovy phones on hold and look to things a little less common and more likely to start a human stampede.

Anything labelled ‘Trump’ is still going to attract buyers from his still millions of devoted MAGA fans, be it a set of gold Trump golf clubs, the latest Melania bobblehead or even a six pack of super absorbent Trump diapers. But we’re looking for that product with real international appeal and not the kind of political stigma that is going to turn most of the world away.

We’ll need the pulling power generated by the web’s hottest influencers as we convince consumers that everybody needs their very own, wait for it – robotic dog! That’s right, it’s bound to be the real must have item of 2026 and no self-respecting style maker or trendsetter will be seen outdoors without one.

We’re talking something about the size of a small poodle, available in at least a dozen or more different colours and controlled by an app on your phone. No stooping down and embarrassment anymore in cleaning up your pooch’s poo poos. The electronic doggie is easily controlled from your smart phone and comes in a variety of designer colours. Instead of a bark it’s linked to Spotify and will readily play any song of your choice on demand. Roll out that sleeping bags as they are coming to a store near you.