The Saboteur: Breaking Up With Amazon

I know what I should do. But....

More chic than an “I Voted” sticker. (Mike Maguire, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Apologies for the late newsletter this week, folks. The last few weeks have been a nonstop parade of trips and visitors. If it makes you feel any better, I haven’t put any laundry away in a month, and it’s piling up so much that I’m considering getting a new laundry basket to handle the ever-growing pile.

Except I’m not sure where I’d buy a laundry basket now that I’m trying to build an off-ramp for using my preferred online retailer. It’s well past time. It’s the right thing to do. I’ve got to break up with Amazon Prime.

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve had two separate conversations with two separate friends who both have quit Amazon. They didn’t just quit Amazon Prime– they stopped using Amazon entirely.

I found the Amazon of it all especially impressive because both of them have small children.

If you have small children or have tried to make plans with somebody who has small children (or if, for one reason or another, it’s difficult for you to leave your house), you’ll appreciate that it’s much, much easier to pull up an app on your phone and order, say, a pack of bibs or a refill of wet wipes than it is to try to coordinate time with your spouse to stay home and watch them alone, or load the aforementioned children into a car and bring them to a physical store, where the children will, best case scenario, make the process take four times longer than it would if you weren’t carting kids around. (Worst case scenario: treat aisle meltdown and extraction from store before necessary items can be obtained.) I can order Amazon one-handed, while breastfeeding or watching my younger daughter try to figure out the mechanics of crawling. Getting rid of Amazon would be about as inconvenient, in my imagination, as making an appointment at the salon every time I wanted to wash my hair.

The first conversation happened the other weekend at a short term Let’s Get Our Families Together! rental outside of Joshua Tree. It was a beautiful evening: the air was clear and dry. The dog was lying on the cement like it was a sound bath. My preschooler was running around with our friends’ preschooler and both of them were mostly leaving the adults alone. And, in that moment of peace, like in most moments of peace post-January, Donald Trump barged in like the Kool Aid man. At least this time we quickly moved on to discussing ways to feel slightly less helpless— boycotts.

Friend One announced, unprompted, that he was done with Amazon. He said that he actually feels relieved that he’s not dealing with them. He said that he watches the truck drive past their house on a quiet residential street in San Diego, and thinks, “We’re not part of that anymore.” He’s relieved to be free of the burden of packages appearing on his front door. I asked him about movies and streaming. He shrugged. “We just go without.”

Just go without. Whew. When you put it that way…

Then, several days later, I was on a walk with Friend Two. Friend Two has just moved into a new house— Imagine moving without Amazon! — but she told me she was done with it. “What about the Prime video stuff?” I asked. She also shrugged.

I don’t know if I can do it, reader.

I’ve already quit other Bezos properties. I unsubscribed from the Washington Post a few tiresome controversies ago. This time around, when Bezos indicated that he’d be inserting himself, pink penis of a man that he is, into newsroom operations more often, I regretted that I did not have another subscription to cancel. When I read the Washington Post, I do so through one of those archiving sites that enables me to avoid the paywall.

I try not to go to Whole Foods. There are better options. On the rare occasion that I shop at Whole Foods, I never buy the white label-store branded items, even though, in classic Amazonian fashion, they are often much cheaper than other brands the store stocks. I don’t use my prime code at check out. The meager discounts the service offers are not worth the data that I would be providing them. (Please send my humanitarian award to my parents’ house.)

I clown on Jeff Bezos. I thought Jeff Bezos was incredibly uncool before it was cool to talk about how uncool he is. I point out that Bezos is an ugly, pathetic nerd who is engaged to a ghoulish-looking cautionary tale against getting too much done to your face, and that his ex-wife MacKenzie Scott is the only good billionaire at every opportunity. I made a whole video about what a doofus he is.

But Amazon. As a media exec giving notes might say, I’m bumping on Amazon. Quitting Amazon is literally among the simplest actions I possibly could to stop my own family’s participation in an exploitative treadmill that prioritizes consumer convenience over employees’ human rights. And yet I’m having trouble pulling the trigger. And all of my excuses for my hesitation are bad excuses, except for the one where I will lose access to dozens of movies I paid for if I can’t stream through Prime anymore. Where would I find episodes of Pee Wee’s Playhouse for my three year old when I need her to truly lock in and let me accomplish something around the house? Where then.

On the other hand: it’s not like Pee Wee’s catalogue will vanish when I click the “cancel” button. Physical media exists and, unlike streaming media, cannot be altered by studios or distributors or streamers after a consumer has purchased it.

I could give some books away to make room for the complete 30 Rock DVD set— if I can figure out where to purchase physical media without Amazon. Why can’t we go back to having those enormous CD/DVD towers like people used to have in the nineties and noughties? The sound of a waterfall of CD jewel cases cascading to the ground as one of those things tips too far to one side is as fresh in my mind as if I’d heard it just yesterday. I could go back to the way things were. Right?

I’m plotting out my Amazon breakup like I’d plot out any other breakup. I’ve made a list of pros and cons. The cons have won. I’ve consulted experts. The experts are like, do it, you idiot. I’ve taken a casual look at what else is out there, and it turns out that what else is out there is my local hardware store and exotic off-the-beaten path stores such as Walgreen’s. Or Target.

Except wait: we’re not supposed to be going to Target anymore, either.

Wal-Mart it is!

Oh wait.