The Hidden Race: Consumerism's Impact on Our Lives

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The other day, I was watching Buy Now on Netflix.
At first, I assumed it would be just another documentary about how big corporations manipulate people into buying more, brainwashing us into joining an endless race of consumption.

But it turned out to be much deeper.
Did I learn something from it?
Absolutely.
There’s a lot to reflect on.

What I Thought Before Watching

Before diving into the documentary, I asked myself a tough question:
What is my problem with buying things?

Because honestly... I’m that person.
There’s always something in my shipping list, be it food, electronics, or clothes.
Every delivery gives me a spike of dopamine.
The excitement of a package arriving? That’s real.
But it made me wonder...
What am I trying to fix with buying?

What the Documentary Showed Me

Once I started watching, one thing became painfully clear:

We’ve all been trained - knowingly or not - to run in a race.

A race to be faster.
To get ahead.
To outpace the person beside us.
To be first in… what, exactly?

Have you ever stopped to ask:

• What exactly am I running toward?

• Who started this race?

• When did I even start?

• Why am I still running?

• Where does it end?

• Who’s watching?

• Who’s clapping?

• And... where am I?

Suddenly, I thought:

We’re all running in a race we never signed up for. And worse - we don’t even know what we’re racing toward.

The Trap of Consumption

The world is full of traps.
And the cruelest thing about this race?
If you stop to look around and notice, you’ll finally see the system, but by then, others have already sprinted past you.

And you don’t want that, do you?

But... why not?

A Familiar Example: Facebook

Remember when Facebook launched?
It was a tool to connect to see what your friends were up to.

Then came features. Then ads. Then reels. Then doomscrolling.
Eventually, I realized I had just lost 2–3 hours of my life doing... absolutely nothing.

So I stopped using Facebook.

But am I away from social media now?
Hell no.
It just changed its form, Instagram, YouTube, food, shopping apps...

One way or another, we’re all being conditioned to consume content, food, clothes, and dopamine.

From Scarcity to Overload

We’ve seen famines, where millions died from hunger.
So we created food abundance.
Now? Millions are dying from overeating and related health issues.

We’ve seen people without clothes.
(Gandhi even discarded his shirt in solidarity with those who didn’t have enough to cover themselves.)

So we mass-produced apparel.
Now? The world is drowning in fast fashion waste.

We solve one crisis by blindly overcorrecting, and end up in another, usually worse.

Back to the Documentary: It's About Trash

Yes, literal and metaphorical trash.

It’s about how we’re turning Earth into a global landfill.

It’s about how corporations have made us believe:

• Buying more is sexy

• Eating junk is cool

• Wasting money is aspirational

• Using things till they wear out is stupid

I realized something chilling:

Big corporations don’t care about sustainability.
They just want us to keep running.
And we’re happy doing it - as long as we feel like we’re “winning.”

They’ll even cut down forests to create spaces for people to "run for the Earth."
(This happened in Brazil. Amazon forest felled to build road for climate summit)

We Are Polluting - Silently, Willingly

With every click, every swipe, every delivery, knowingly or not, we chip away at our world.

No one notices the damage.
No one remembers who pays the price.
Because forgetting has been made normal.

And in that silence, corporations thrive.
Not by hiding the cost
But by teaching us to look away from it.

Final Thought

I’m not perfect.
I still scroll. I still buy.

But now I ask questions.
And sometimes, that’s the first step to escaping the race.

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