Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy

As "Buy Now! The Shopping Experience" (2024 release; 84 min) opens, we get to know Maren Costa, a former Amazon "used experience designer" and inventor of the "one buy click". She details the enormous amount of science that goes into the Amazon buyer experience leading to super easy and quick (impulse?) purchases. But what happens after all that stuff has been purchased? At this point we are less than 10 minutes into the documentary.

Couple of comments: this is the latest from documentarian Nic Stacey ("Codebreaker"). Here he examines two separate but related issues: the first is how big companies like Amazon, Apple, and Adidas (all featured in the documentary) perfect the art of inducing consumers to buy, buy, buy, and then buy some more. The second is what happens with all of the unwanted or expired products afterwards. IT is the second one that is by far the more urgent issue, and the movie is in that sense a natural companion to "An Inconvenient Truth". To give just one example: we learn in this documentary that every day13 million mobile phones get thrown out around the world. Some of the footage in the documentary regarding waste and landfills shocks the conscience.

"Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy" recently started streaming on Netflix. Netflix recommended it to me based on my viewing habits. This documentary is currently rated 81% Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. If you have any interest in the buying experience and what happens with stuff after that, I'd readily suggest you check this out and draw your own conclusion.

Full disclosure, unless you're in complete denial of the consumption culture of today - not much of the information presented in this film will surprise you. If you've decided to watch it, chances are you will already be aware of some of the information presented. It's such an important and relevant topic, which deserves space for intelligent discussion, so it was disappointing that it was presented in such a cheesy and infantilising way. The female robot voice narrating intermittently throughout was particularly annoying that I almost turned it off - fortunately the parts between were interesting and had value. The interviews with key ex-employees of big corps was compelling enough to hold up on it's own, without the bizarre additions which seemed to serve only to fill airtime, which could have otherwise been used to further the message. It's a shame because we need more of this kind of messaging as mass consumption becomes ever more prevalent, I am just hoping the next effort delivers better.

Yeah, we all know Amazon is a monster... This can only be informative to newbies to consumerist ideology. Or those seriously in denial, but why would they watch this? How would they even come across it? There's about 20 minutes of this that is informative or interesting to me. 20 minutes overall.

Otherwise it's relying on some garishly colourful visuals and some basic animation as a gimmick for the narrative approach. That app teaching you how to become rich by increasing sales and wrecking the environment at all costs is pretty cringe, both in the dialogue and the design. I would've preferred straightforward documentary narration with hard-hitting facts.

Yes there is a consumption crisis. Yes corporations should hold themselves to a higher ethical standard. Yes it's admirable when people who participate in the exploitation of humanity, walk away and speak their truths. Yes we are pleased there is a top 10 documentary on a major streaming platform addressing sad facts of the matter. No we did not like sasha. No we did not find the lightbulb story relevant considering everything is LED now. No we did not appreciate the flashing lights. This 1 and done short doc is great for elementary aged children and maybe a few grown adults who are still oblivious. Not sure why there was only a few corporations mentioned over and over. Apple products still last on average about 5 years before you either trade up or sell. I have never thrown out an apple product and the landfill shots showed non apple products. An average microsoft products lasts maybe 2 years if your lucky and there is no resale or trade in value on them. I would have liked to see more on Shein and H&M. I wanted to hear more about the sports products. If your going to do a documentary like this at least provide a well needed 10 part series. The waste investigation was really cool and that alone would be a great ongoing series to watch. More needed to be said about the origin of the products when made and the environmental devastation upon inception of a product and the shipments of product. Nothing on electric cars and batteries? All around a decent watch but took forever to get to the point. I almost stopped watching after 5 minutes and kept waiting for the "ah-ha!" moment but it never transpired. Well deserved 7.

Whilst the message this documentary is trying to send is an important one, and one everyone should be aware of, the presentation was just poor. There was no overarching story to keep going back to, just wading from one problem area to another, with pretty bizarre interjections from an AI that try to lighten the mood by jokingly educating you on how to create more waste and exploit consumers. This really takes you out of the serious message that needs to be understood, and feels like it's trying to connect with gen Z audiences way too hard. Can we please stop messing up documentaries about these topics and produce one well so that we can genuinely recommend it to people to open their eyes?