Plain Slice of Documentary Pizza
Sometimes I peruse one of the 492 streaming services that I should probably cancel in the hopes of finding a documentary to enlighten me. I want to know things! I already have four books on the go, so adding more words per second to my day wasn’t it. Podcasts are good in theory but there’s something about listening to someone drone on (ADHD)—even if it is interesting—that is akin to a popsicle slowly dribbling away after it was tossed onto a searing Phoenix highway.
The topic itself usually doesn’t matter too much, as long as it’s something I can find even a sliver of interest in. I scrolled through Netflix and found Buy Now: The Shopping Conspiracy and thought Great! Tell me more about how we’re all getting duped in ways I haven’t imagined because I want to know something new. Also, I spend too much money on dumb shit.
It was an hour and 24 minutes of annoying filler graphics of some imaginary AI “guiding” the viewer through the documentary, reminding everyone that we are consuming so much that it generates enough garbage to fill Paris into oblivion (I’m paraphrasing). I don’t actually dispute anything that was said, but there was a lot of pomp and circumstance, production-wise that could’ve been used to provide information that wasn’t already obvious over a decade ago. I don’t know a ton about specific consumerism concepts, but spending an inordinate amount of time telling us that Amazon tried out a bunch of different coloured buttons on their website to see which was most appealing is something I would expect to hear in a low-budget documentary produced in the 70s (no offense to the 70s).
And maybe that was the irony? The documentary was supposed to be “flashy” and engaging with it’s hyperreal segues and overall feel, but it mostly left me underwhelmed and slightly dumber than I was an hour and half prior. Ok—I get that there needs to be a certain level of production value, but where is the motherfucking content? There was almost nothing given, informationally-speaking, that hasn’t been espoused elsewhere (and more succinctly) four billion times before. Was it really trying to drive home the idea of “planned obsolescence” by making me realize after the fact that watching this was a waste of my time and I now need to scour other sources to find something that actually holds less-than-obvious information? Do I need to obtain a marketing degree? I just thought I was going to learn something new and interesting before I eventually watched The Golden Girls but turns out, I have learned much more from a show surrounding four, 55+ year old women having a go at it in Miami as roommates than a bijillion dollar Netflix production that probably just somehow caused me to accumulate more garbage that’ll be dumped over the Louvre or whatever. It tried to be profound, but I can assure you, not once did I have my mouth agape. Not once. An open mouth is the utmost telltale sign that the shit you’re watching has some major substance and you just blew my fucking mind.
My mind, effectively, went to my bookshelf to consider a fifth book to start amongst the unfinished ones while my mouth remained firmly shut, except to drink water because I was dehydrated from eating too much cheese.
Maybe I was just annoyed that there was so much potential to delve into certain aspects that were merely glossed over in favour of those stupid, never-ending Temu Alexa sequences they added between every interview. TELL ME MORE STUFF ABOUT SELLING ME MORE STUFF!!
Serves me right. I try to intellectualize everything—not in a “I’m so smart and only read academic journals”—but more so in a “I NEED to know why” way. I’m curious. You cannot be neurodivergent and have a degree in the social sciences and NOT ask “why” at least 8,194 times a day; it’s just not possible. I thought I was doing myself a favour this evening by purchasing a bunch of frozen pizza that was on sale for something ridiculous like, under $4 each. Everything was good until I got distracted and looked at the side of the box, stating a warning to “not overcook”, as if doing so would heed dire, unconscionable consequences (Would my oven explode? Would some Roman god of pizza appear and scorn my entire family? Would it just merely taste like under $4 shit pizza?). Anyway, it didn’t specify, but once again, I had questions about why that was so problematic and had to specifically be stated instead of us collectively being like “ya, you shouldn’t overcook your food because it ruins it if you do that and it’s not like we need this written on the box because it’s obvious, ok?”.
Perhaps it is not-so-obvious, just like how maybe it is not-so-obvious that mass consumerism is a problem (really, though?? We don’t know that yet??). I don’t want to get all “common sense isn’t that common anymore” because that’s annoying, but really? Did you think old iPhones evaporated after the new version is released? I just think an hour and 24 minutes is a sufficient amount of time to delve into certain things beyond a surface level, especially if you left out the 2025 version of animated Clip Art that probably took up half of that time.
If history (including the Ninja Turtles) has taught us anything (apparently not enough in most cases), never pay full price for a late pizza, OR trust anyone named Jeffrey (especially when it’s spelled “Geoffrey” because you just know he’s got an avalanche of plastic doll heads in his attic).