Transcriber: Wagner Alcântara Reviewer: Anna Sobota
“Hot singles in your area.”
That’s what I first saw while browsing through the internet
looking for an English topic for my essay.
I mean, she told us we could write about anything,
but I wasn’t gonna write about that.
So I kept browsing, browsing, browsing,
and eventually I came across the idea of planned obsolescence.
Well, what’s that?
It’s a production practice which makes your products obsolete
and require repair in the near future.
It reminded me of that ad from before.
It’s quick, easy, fast.
It’s everywhere around us.
So I went to do more digging.
I wanted to find out more.
How does this affect us today?
How did we not know about this before?
So I kept searching
and eventually I came across something that was from the Great Depression.
Do you know that they used to take the expiration dates on milk
and set it way earlier so people would keep going back
and buying more milk even though it was still good?
I mean, they already weren’t doing so hot and then they charge people for more milk?
I mean, it was kinda counterintuitive, but it’s not my opinion.
And then I went searching more and then I was thinking:
What about the consumer culture that rose in the ’50s and ’60s?
Americans started throwing money everywhere.
We had time for entertainment, people weren’t just working anymore.
And eventually, as the years passed, it led to the Right to Repair movement.
I mean, it proposed legislation where people could actually, practically,
I guess, provide parameters for repairing their items
rather than just simply throwing it away
at the first glance.
All these things came forward throughout the years and I thought about it:
How does this affect us today?
How does the consumer mindset and planned obsolescence
impact our daily lives when it’s been around for so long
and we didn’t know about it?
It affects three things:
the economy,
the environment,
and, most of all, our relationships.
Starting with the economy:
it was introduced to be a boon.
It was there to create profit.
It was something good, good for all of us.
But, with the amount of time we spend buying so many items over and over,
consumers become much less willing to just keep buying the same crappy products.
You know how Apple makes their chargers purposely crappy, so you keep going back
and buying more and more, time and time again.
Well, nobody wants to do that anymore,
you want a charger that lasts at least a year.
So if it’s not good for the economy, it can be good for the environment.
I mean, who knows how environmentally friendly trash is?
Not so much, right?
Did you know we produce
around 2.54 million tons of trash per year in the U.S. alone?
To put it in perspective,
that’s around five pounds of trash per person per day.
That’s the size of a small infant!
I don’t know about you, but that’s a little scary
if we’re producing that much trash.
It’s not good for the environment.
It’s not good for the economy.
How is that affecting our brains,
our relationships,
the bonds we make with people?
There’s so much around us, and
who are we really without the people that surround us
and help us grow as individuals?
I mean, we have our family, our friends.
We have our romantic relationships.
We even have our relationship with ourself.
We make bonds as an investment for longevity.
We aspire those bonds.
We hope those bonds grow longer and longer throughout the time.
We don’t make them for a quick 10 minutes and just go on with our day.
Those relationships are there forever.
They’re there to last.
Take friends, for example.
With the idea of planned obsolescence,
people are more likely to be envious,
indifferent, and judgmental towards each other
with the ideas of materialism and wealth.
When it comes to romantic relationships, I guess, think about Tinder and Match.com.
It’s so quick, easy, fast.
All you have to do is swipe right
and that’s it.
It’s so simple.
Even society promotes this all the time and we don’t realize it.
It’s all around us.
It’s constantly surrounding us.
So besides romantic relationships,
besides relationships with friends and family,
how is it affecting our relationship with ourselves?
This idea of consumerism and materialism,
that inflates our egos by giving us a rush of dopamine.
We think: “Oh my God, I have this cool new iPhone!
I wonder what other people think of me.”
I mean, that constant type of thinking can't be good for ourselves, can it?
I mean, it permanently alters our egos, everything.
So we need to be mindful of how we interact with this sort of concept
that surrounds our daily lives.
It’s not new.
It’s been there for so long,
so we need to understand it to a deeper level.
We need to be mindful.
So I ask of you today,
when you go on, go out in your endeavors, your daily lives,
live with intent and longevity.
Understand that not everything has to be so quick, so fast.
I know we have so much technology
around us today,
but take that moment to stop and think.
What value does this item that I’m buying hold?
What value does this item hold?
How much do I value these relationships?
It’s just like that.
When you purchase an item
that could really last for so much longer,
it’s similar to when you can just buy something that has more longevity.
So live with intent and longevity.
Change those consumer spending habits and really value those people around you.
Those people around you really make you who you are
and those bonds make you so much stronger.
And we’re all going to be here together on this Earth, aren’t we?
So we might as well make it the best it can be.
Thank you.
(Applause)