commodity: experiences in late capitalism
$5.00
Commodity is a zine about my experiences living in our current late capitalist hellscape. In this zine, I explore how capitalism has impacted my life and my sense of self. Subjects covered include my experiences growing up poor, my frustrations with living in a gentrified Toronto, how “personal branding” is further dehumanizing us, and how “side hustle” culture is leading to a growing push to monetize every moment of our lives.
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Excerpts:
“Money was a constant source of stress in our household, and that stress was well entrenched within me from a very early age.
And yet, I never saw myself or my family as poor; sure, we didn’t have any money, but we weren’t poor.
To me, being poor meant being homeless, going hungry, and begging for money in the streets. It certainly didn’t mean living in an apartment with tasteful wallpaper and bedroom curtains that matched my duvet.
I didn’t realize until much later that my grandmother intentionally painted a middle class gloss over our cash-strapped existence...”
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“I’m struggling to afford to live in this city. Many of my friends have left Toronto behind in search of a more affordable existence (and I don’t blame them). Against my better judgment, I’m desperately trying to hold on to the Toronto that I knew and loved, hopeful that I can be a force helping restore Toronto to the haven I knew.”
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“By reducing ourselves to ‘personal brands,’ we make it even easier for capitalists to see us as nothing but a means to making ever-increasing profits. By portraying ourselves in an easily digestible way that doesn’t require more than a few seconds to understand, we’re making it easier for those in power to see us as nothing but commodities on a market rather than as individual people.”
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“In this new ‘side hustle’ economy, the onus is on us to piece together than existence and to find new ways of earning the money we need to simply survive. This lets capitalists off the hook when they underpay us and generally treat us like disposable commodities instead of as people. It also forces us to be continually ‘productive’ in order to survive. If you have multiple part-time jobs and/or ‘side hustles,’ you’ll likely spend the majority of your waking hours working or doing something that involves work in some way (eg. commuting, applying for jobs).”