The Cost of Being a Consumer
By Shane

In the past two months, I seem to have taken on a new - and quite expensive - hobby. It's more stimulating than my zen rock garden, more time-consuming than my bonsai tree collection, and more costly than my never-finished home renovations. In terms of sheer enjoyment, it ranks right up there with slamming my genitalia in a desk drawer. Repeatedly.

My new hobby is called Getting Burned Buying Magic.

It's probably a hobby of yours, too. After all, Getting Burned Buying Magic is closely akin to masturbation: everybody does it but no one admits it.

We've all been burned, though, whether just singed on the outside or roasted through and through to the resemblance of a charcoal briquette. Naturally, that's quite enough to get our heart racing and our blood pressure up, but couple that with the most irritating part of this whole mess and it's a miracle none of us dress up in women's clothing, grab an assault rifle, climb to the top of a bell tower and start picking off anyone even remotely capable of gleefully selling us garbage.

So maybe that's the big question? Who is to blame when we get burned? Whose fault is it when we drop our hard-earned shekels and rupees and euros and pounds and dollars and rands for what amounts to sometimes perverse idea of "valuable"?

Let's take a look at the usual suspects responsible for that latest bundle of crud which ends up in our sock drawer as our bank account sinks like Atlantis.

First up is the Creator, and admittedly a very good suspect he is. Usually he's a Name, which means he's won some competition or the other or managed to get some product into people's hands before or something just as worthy. Now, some creators may take advantage of the past to create for themselves a more lucrative present. They'll release their marvels with their name glowing on every printed side of the package. If they are clever enough, a bunch of the Names will get together and support each other with general praise for the waste material you will purchase. You can notice which ones are clever by examining the quotes for circular references: Name A will support Name B who will say only thrilling things about Name C who dearly lusts after the product from Name A. It can get confusing, so most creators don't go that route; they keep it simple, dole all the platitudes on themselves they can, and sleep well knowing someone will buy their dregs. Of course, that doesn't mean they won't beg, plead, and cajole their Name friends from making positive reviews in magazines, forums, etc.; it's just that they don't have to remember what garbage they said they liked if they do it themselves.

And the worse part is they know what they are selling you is the dregs, but - hey! - they can do it so they will. And if they don't have any dregs of their own, they'll go back in time and whisk away dregs from someone else, put their name on it, and then sell it to you!

So the dregs the creator puts together go to our second suspect, the Distributor, if there is one. Funny thing about magic: a lot of stuff gets out there without having a distributor of some kind. In those cases, the Creator and the Distributor are one, which is typical but sometimes lethal. After all, it's the distributor who puts the idea into a package of some kind, edits it (one would hope), and invests probably the first real money into getting it into your hands. You would think with their own bucks backing these things, they'd want to make sure they release a good product, right? Right! And believe it or not, most times they do. Politics and greed come into play for some Distributors (typically when they are also either the Creator and/or the Dealer), and that tinges the whole thing. After all, if they make a concentrated effort to push inferior product, then that product will move, however briefly, until the next rotten thing comes along.

And where does it move? The Dealer. That's right; the evil, mean, rotten, cheating Dealer. This is probably the prime suspect for a lot of good people who have been burned. After all, they are the ones who write the dealer ads. Some dealers have elevated ad-writing to an art form all to itself. How many times have we joked about ad content?

And so on and so on and so on…

And, of course, it's the dealer that says "No way, loser!" when we try to return a piece of junk as he screams "The secret is the most valuable part of the trick!" in our shell-shocked faces as we run for cover. In fact, I'd wager it's the dealer we most often blame when we get burned since he's the one we are in direct contact with at the time of purchase.

But is the Dealer guilty? After all, the Distributor sold the garbage to the dealer. So the Distributor's guilty? He just got it from the Creator. It's the Creator then? The Creator's the guilty party?

No. All are innocent. Oh, sure, they all contributed to burning us, and they are definitely accessories to the crime. But the guilty party, the one who should be in shackles and leg-irons and forced to wear an orange jumpsuit while picking up trash along the highway, who should by all rights have "mea culpa" tattooed on their forehead is a surprise to no one:

It's our fault. It always has been and it always will be.

The instant we plunked our money down to buy something from a creator who has burned us before, we were found guilty.

The moment we bought from a distributor who chucked more junk into the supply line because, well, hell, this one does sound good and it's the only place to get it, we were accountable.

The second we took something from a dealer shelf, a dealer who has lied by omission or sold us garbage before, we were responsible.

We are made victims because we let them make us victims. And it will never cease to amaze me the frequency with which we all let this happen time and time again.

It's time to stop being victims of our own suffocating traditions. It's time to take a stand. Now, especially, with so much rubbish appearing in magazine ads and dealer websites and all over the place. It's time to start acting like what we are: consumers.

That means we have a price to pay. We have to be vocal, and we have to be vigilant. We have to know for ourselves what is right and what is wrong, and be damned sure of it.

We have to tell a dealer when we buy something that is garbage. We have to demand a refund. We have to put aside that pretty poetry of "The Secret Is The Most Valuable Part of Magic!" and not let anyone throw that down our throats. Does the secret have value? Absolutely! If it's a good secret. But we aren't given the ability to judge, and for a while there we were happy to believe that all secrets were worth something. Lately, that's not the case. And when dealers and creators and distributors can assure me my money is buying a secret that is worth something, then I'll not make a fuss. Until then, well, as my grandmother said, that dog don't hunt.

If we don't get satisfaction from the dealer, then we need to step up to plate and contact the distributor. If that fails, then we go to the creator. We have to be less concerned with the names of people who make trash and pay more attention to the names of the people on those bills we spend.

And, more important than anything, if we get burnt, we don't spend money again. Not with that dealer, not with that distributor, not with that creator. Ever. And we tell them so.

Face it, at some point we lost our basic right as consumers: we lost the right not to get ripped off. I don't know who gave up that right for us, but we can take it back. We can remind creators and dealers and distributors we are the ones who need to be satisfied, not them. We need to get a value back for our money, or else we go somewhere else. If nothing else, we hold onto it and simply don't spend it on The Latest Big Thing That Is Really Crap.

It's time for us to remember we're the consumer and the customer, and we vote with our feet and with our money. We go where we get our money's worth and we spend it right there.

We can keep coming back, or we can move ahead on. By right it's our choice and their worry.

It's got to be that way. Otherwise we might as well bite the bullet and keep right on getting burned. And watching the amount of crap just pile deeper and deeper around us.

Shane