Fedbook keeps giving me these video ads for the latest shelf-stable meal kit scam. I haven’t been able bring myself to block them b/c they fascinate me.
The whole prepper food industry in general is deeply fascinating to me. Whenever I see grifters using paranoia to trick people into paying too much money for terrible food a part of me feels mad that I didn’t think of it first.
Like obviously I’m me and I spend an unhealthy amount of time thinking about disaster preparedness but also there’s this store called Costco you might have heard about
This is why I’m heading your way in the event of a nuclear apocalypse. Radioactive Costco adventures and someone to talk vampire shit with.
Also, this is your reminder to read The Last Girl Scoutby@natalieironside if you haven’t already. I’m rereading it right now and it is *chef kiss.* It’s like a post-apocalyptic fairytale meets classic horror genre and stunningly queer.
I’m just sitting here dumbfounded that there IS a prepper food industry selling prepackaged foods. Like, why invest a bunch of money in a finite resource as your apocalypse backup plan? Garden. Forage. Throw some potatoes in that flower bed you don’t use for anything and let them do their thing. Get taken over by zucchini. Pick some curly dock seeds growing wild in the vacant lot and make crackers out of them. It’s free or near-free food, and knowledge that no supply chain breakdown can separate you from. And, you know, a fun hobby to engage in during the pre-apocalypse too.
Because the prepper movement is a consumer identity that’s sort of like a deeply paranoid and politically reactionary equivalent to being a juggalo or being way too into Marvel movies except that they have an added level of (at least self-imposed) legitimacy since the thing they’re obsessed with is arguably real and their fandom swag is more corporeal.
It’s hard to turn building relationships with your neighbors and learning practical skills (or anything else that would actually help you survive a disaster) into an easily-monetized aesthetic to sell cool faux-milspec gear to scared suburban dads with inferiority complexes.
(I say this as both a survivalist and a juggalette)
the last sentence deals an unfathomable level of psychic damage
You came to the cringe website of your own knowing volition. That’s like taking psychic damage from seeing sand on the beach.
