In this article, senior staff columnist Sierra O’Neil examines how recent trendy collectables are purchased, opened and then quickly tossed.

As the air cools and leaves begin to change color, college students anxiously await not Thanksgiving or apple picking at local orchards, but rather, the multi-night event of Halloween. As kids, Halloween...

Yes — under capitalism, within the U.S.’s car-reliant infrastructure, with laughable minimum wages and flagrant union-busting left and right, there are plenty of exploitative industries and environmentally toxic byproducts that normal people simply cannot opt out of. We should always emphasize a class perspective when the idealistic wealthy criticize others for not being perfect environmentalists or assume everyone has time to be a choosy shopper. 

In a society where we already overconsume so much content, we do not need social media to make it worse than it already is. Social media should be a platform for content creation, sharing pictures and videos and just an overall peaceful place where you can mindlessly scroll for hours. What it should not be is a shopping platform. 

Whether you’re an influencer or just a regular person, no one person needs 30 eyeshadow palettes, 50 lipsticks and lip glosses or 10 of the same blending brush. It’s just not realistic for anyone to use all of them. Chances are, we buy the new collections and collabs for the hype, use them for like 2 weeks and then forget they exist.