Did you know the world is absolutely full of people just like you who are sick and tired of the status quo? But you’d hardly ever hear about it while sucking at the corporate media teat; their goal is chloroform — or at the very least to distract you while they put these subversive fires out. Your ultimate enlightenment and actual personal freedom will never come from an Inc., my friends.

But don’t worry: this longtime underground scribe has got your six. Now just sit back and listen in for several tales of popular lifestyle uprisings that have our corporate overlords freaking out — and don’t want you to know about.˚˚

1. The Minimalism Movement

Nothing should strike fear in the heart of the greedy banksters on Wall Street more than this. The very kryptonite to their incessant, ubiquitous cries of moremoremore in the public square is: less.

Shopping will make everything better, they tell us.

The problem is, of course, it won’t.

Problem:

Where to begin? The Great Pacific garbage patch, the plastic pollution in the sea that even the fish can’t completely eat (and it’s not really good for them anyways, poor little fellas) . . .

I’m just going to step out of the way here and let this nice lady take over:

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New from the Story of Stuff Project: The Story of Microfibers

Solution:

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What is Minimalism | What is Minimalism 2 | Some nifty quotes on minimalism thru history | Are there 6 types of minimalism?

Is a minimalism movement happening? You bet it is. Or, at least the millennials are getting it:

Millennials are highly adept at using technology and social media influences many of their purchases. They prefer to spend on experiences rather than on stuff. Seventy-eight percent of millennials — compared to 59% of baby boomers — “would rather pay for an experience than material goods,” according to a survey from Harris Poll and Eventbrite cited on Bloomberg. They favor products marketed as ethical, sustainable and environmentally friendly.

— via Millennials Go Minimal: The Decluttering Lifestyle Trend That Is Taking Over

How the Empire Strikes Back:

The first step in any corporate media campaign is silence — leaving us proles to whisper amongst ourselves, passing around samizdats and such.

The second step, of course, is the usual: pissing down every sensory orifice you have 24/7 and calling it rain: AKA the advertising industry. Buy this. Don’t you feel fat/ugly/dumb/stinky/whatever without that? Consume. Obey. Work. Reproduce. Conform. Buy. Watch television.

You are your stuff.

Your stuff is you.

Funk that noise.

Join the Resistance:

Watch the full Minimalism documentary.

Read this book: Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organising. And go sloughing.

Don’t buy anything at all, get it for free, and when you do buy something: buy it for life and buy it for less.

Support the Zero Waste movement and the ending of planned obsolescence.

Stop watching or listening to advertising — completely. I went ad-free almost 2 decades ago — now whenever I hear a commercial (despite all my best efforts), it feels like a cockroach inside my head. Cut the cord if you haven’t already.

Try to remember this basic, ultimate truth: experiences are better than things, and you can’t take it with you.