About Stop Buying Stuff Magazine
So we're pretty sure 2009 is the start of the New Great Depression. And we're not feeling terribly prepared for years of hardship. We've never had to pick up coal off the railroad tracks or work in a silk factory or eat corn mush, and we're not sure that we'd learn real fast, either. But in addition to our real anxiety about all the people who are losing their jobs right now and the multitude who will really suffer if this thing drags on, we can't help but feel a little excited. In fact, ever since we noticed the giant economic disaster we will persist here in calling the New Great Depression, we have secretly thrilled. When we read our morning (free, online) newspaper, we feel hopeful. We feel a little guilty about that. But it is exciting to think that things might be changing, and changing much more rapidly than we could have hoped for a couple years ago. For the first time in our lifetime, people are really starting to talk about the things we have thought for some time must be good ideas: sustainable technology, entrepreneurship, a reliance on community, and the end of unthinking over-consumption. We suspect that for many people who were, like we were, born into a culture in which CEOs make million dollar bonuses, people in all sorts of professions are expected to work seventy-hour weeks to get ahead, and teenagers routinely get stabbed for their sneakers, a New Great Depression would be an enormous relief.
We see this New Great Depression as an opportunity to put down the credit card, not mortgage ourselves, and stop buying crap we probably don't need! Join us in doing things other than buying stuff!
Stop Buying Stuff Magazine (.com) is dedicated to celebrating the things that the New Great Depression can't take away from us. If we all have to move to Hooverville, we can still sing songs and tell stories and play games. We can still have sex and take walks and cook good, cheap meals, and get drunk with friends and family. And Stop Buying Stuff Magazine thinks there probably isn't anything else we'd rather be doing anyway.
Use this website as a resource to keep you happy during the New Great Depression, at least until you have to cancel your internet service to save money. Read our stories, play our games, cook our recipes, and sing our songs. We'll be adding new ideas, projects and links as the New Great Depression continues. And please, send us your version of all these things, so we can share them.
Stop Buying Stuff magazine is a collaboration between you and other cool people. So share some content for the magazine. You will get a publication credit and become part of a community of people, all of whom know how to do something. At Stop Buying Stuff Magazine we believe that, like Molly Ringwald in The Breakfast Club, who puts on lipstick with her boobs, everyone knows how to do something, and it would be a shame to keep what you know to yourself. Send us your recipes, crafts, art, stories, resources, games, songs, poems, letters, drawings, images, riddles, or instructions. Send us whatever you've got.
Write us with your projects and ideas at:
stopbuyingstuffmagazine at gmail dot com
And take a look at these videos that inspired the magazine:
Don't Buy Stuff
The New Hard Times
The Story of Stuff
Stop Buying Stuff Magazine is not officially affiliated with anything. Except you.
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