Assignment #1: Inquiry Paper (Regarding Personal Experience with Consumerism)

Alzayer 1

Mohammed Alzayer

Mrs Engstrom

English 250 RD

Audience: class and instructor

20 September 2013

Assignment #1: Inquiry paper (regarding personal experience with consumerism)

I couldn’t quite believe it when I finally touched my first vinyl record which is also my very first online purchase. “You don’t even have a turntable!” my mom lamented. I didn’t even care if I could play it or not. All I cared about was starting my own Kylie Minogue collection.

Who is Kylie Minogue, you ask? She is simply the Madonna of Europe. Although she is not very popular in the United States, Minogue has a big fan base in the rest of the world. Perhaps you remember her from her 1988 cover of the Little Eva song “The Loco-Motion” or her 2001 pop hit single “Can’t Get You out of My Head” with its hook line “la la la.” Minogue, who came from Australia and is currently based in the United Kingdom, has a huge discography and a career spanning more than twenty-five years since the late 80s. I’ve been a Kylie fan since the day I was born and her music has always been a part of every step of my life. When I showed interest in graphic design, her creative albums artworks were a big inspiration to me. I couldn’t resist all the colorful, beautiful Kylie releases I see on the internet, so I decided to start my own

Kylie collection. I was urged to buy and collect CDs, DVDs, Blu Rays, USBs, books, magazines, singles, and posters from three different decades. That was not a possible mission to accomplish through physical stores as only recent releases and limited formats are available there. The only way around was, well, online shopping. Living in Saudi Arabia, that was not an option. The

“Kylie collection mission,” however, led me to jump through hoops just to make shopping online Alzayer 2 possible. Unfortunately, that made me obsessed with online shopping, not only for Kylie items but for other things as well. Even though I’m glad that I’m able to get items online that I don’t find in physical stores, sometimes I have regrets for making my first online purchase. Buying that Kylie Minogue vinyl record online was a lot of work and it opened the door to an online shopping addiction and spending money irresponsibly on things I don’t even need.

It was a school night in the fall of 2008 when I opened my first online package. Being a

Saudi, shopping online felt like a miracle or a dream come true. I went straight to my laptop to chat with a Kylie fan who lives all the way in Mexico just to tell him how excited I was with the package. I didn’t get the reaction I was hoping for. He was like “you received your online order, so what?” My response was “of course, you live in Mexico and you have a huge Kylie collection that you obtained online, but do you know how struggle it is to shop online in Saudi Arabia?”

Well, let me break it down for you. First of all, the home addresses are a mess and sometimes not even recognized by the post office. We moved to a new home in a brand new neighborhood in early 2008 and we experienced a delay in getting a home address. Amazon.com and third party sellers on eBay.com do not offer worldwide shipping most of the time, so that was another major problem. My desire to start a Kylie collection led me to discover a service called “Shop & Ship” from a Middle Eastern courier delivery services company called Aramex. This company gives its customers addresses in the United States since the most common shopping websites are based there. The addresses are typically boxes with the customers’ names in Aramex warehouse in

New York City. The packages would get delivered to the warehouse and then forwarded to the local post office in Saudi for the customers to pick up at their convenience. The downside is that the customer would have to pay two shipping fees: the shipping to the US address and the Alzayer 3

Aramex shipping to Saudi. I was okay with that because I was desperate and jealous of all the fans who collect Kylie albums online!

I still remember how excited I was to finally ‘meet’ the first online package, a Kylie

Minogue vinyl record. I’d hold it all day long with the fear that it was not real and would disappear in the next morning. Vinyl records declined harshly in Saudi since the 70s and you can no longer find them anywhere. So you can tell why I was so happy to hold and own my very first vinyl record. It wasn’t only a rare format, but it also has such a beautiful artwork. After I received that record, which is the 1988 eponymously-titled debut album Kylie, I thought online shopping was fun and not a difficult mission to accomplish after all. At that point, I had a long way to go with my collection. I started placing numerous orders with all the Kylie Minogue releases to complete the collection I started. I used to wait for my dad to come from work with all the packages he picked up from Aramex every week day. After a couple of months of collecting, the thrill I felt every time I received a new package was gone. Without me realizing it,

I started looking for ways to feel the enjoyment of owning these items. The first thing I did was listing them on SayHey.co.uk, which is a Kylie fans discussion board. SayHey.co.uk has many fans who list the newest Kylie items they get in a special thread. They brag about the rare items they have and how big their collections are getting. It sounded like fun, so I went ahead and I joined them. Listing the items somehow gave me satisfaction and pleasure and made me feel superior to the other fans.

It has been five years since I listed my items online and I almost forgot about it until recently when I read a 2006 article entitled “A Sense of Belonging among Belongings” by

Stephanie Rosenbloom from the New York Times. The article describes the launch of a social networking website called Zebo which allowed its members to “share the contents of their Alzayer 4 homes.” It was interesting to find different opinions on the reasons for teens’ tendency to list the things they own online. For example, the founder and chief executive of Zebo Roy de Souza thought that “for the youth, you are who you own.” He added “they [the youth] list these things because it defines them.” In addition to Mr. de Souza input, some Zebo members felt it was interesting to maintain an inventory of what they have and what they care about (332). To me, none of these reasons apply to my case. I believe that I just listed my items online because I knew that I didn’t need them and I wanted to feel that they were worth something. The vinyl being “rare” and having a cute design was just an excuse to buy it. I can easily download the songs on that record on iTunes where I can also get its booklet for free. The vinyl costs double the price of the digital tracks and can’t even be played without having a turntable.

Today, looking at the long lists I posted on discussion boards made me realize that I wasted a lot of money on things I don’t even need.. or use. My mom understood me since the beginning. Her words when I held my vinyl record to the air are still ringing in my ears: “you don’t even have a turntable!” It is true that online shopping made it easier for us to get rare things that we can no longer find otherwise, but some of us fall into the trap of online shopping addiction. I moved to the United States in 2010 to peruse my college education which made the process of buying online way easier. I thought that moving to the US would make my addiction even worse, but I was cured as I matured a lot since 2008. I make wiser buying decisions and I can definitely tell the difference between needs and wants. As a Kylie fan, I only buy her new tracks digitally and I don’t bother buying the limited editions or other minor releases for my collection. Hence, I don’t see the point of listing my items on social networks anymore. Alzayer 5

Works Cited Rosenbloom, Stephanie. "A Sense of Belonging among Belongings." The Aims of Argument: A Text and Reader. Eds. Timothy W. Crusius and Carolyn E. Channel. 7th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011. 249-251. Print.