The Culture of Stupidity

"This is something that is once in a lifetime. When do you ever get to do this? You get to meet a whole bunch of new people and hang out. Drink a lot of coffee, eat a lot of pizza and just have a lot of fun." New IKEA warehouse customer, bubbling over with joy and thanksgiving.

Poor soul. This, arriving a day early, before the grand opening, to camp out overnight trying to keep warm on a cold winter night, among a handful of other delusional hopefuls to be among the first to swarm into the store at its official opening. Her life must be a large vacuum with little in the way of intelligent relief from vacuous sameness if this event represents a social epiphany to her.

Hardcore IKEA fans camp out overnight in anticipation of its grand opening Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2011 in Ottawa. Photograph by: Pat McGrath, The Ottawa Citizen

In the end, she - and those who shared her delirious exultation at this 'once in a lifetime' opportunity to witness the opening of yet another big box store with its dreary merchandise and their infuriatingly witless nomenclature, along with the hugely successful marketing scheme to convince people they need all this drek, and moreover will pay to haul it home and assemble it - needn't have bothered.

As a contrast to the furiously rampaging consumer mobs in Indonesia morbidly anxious to be among the first one thousand to be blessed by the god of consumerism to be allowed to buy a half-price BlackBerry, a mere several hundred Ottawans turned out for the grand opening of a dreary but amazingly popular IKEA warehouse posing as an exciting, quality-goods shopping emporium.

Those who did turn out shared sugar-plum holiday dreams of IKEA management, in recognition of their faithful fealty to the brand, handing out free goods in appreciation. It is amazing how people will doff their good sense for the muted prospect of 'getting something for nothing'. As though their time and their absurd enthusiasm was not worth plenty to the IKEA empire.

"I'm here to have fun and to support IKEA for coming into the community and boosting the economy", said another woman who brought along her five-year-old son whose indoctrination will begin at an early age. But that child is not alone. For here's the excited declaration of another shopper: "I'm definitely a crazy IKEA shopper. I've been coming here since I was eight."

How utterly abysmal. These are the values that people cherish; their devotion to a brand whose enterprising founder was clever enough to realize how readily people take to being manipulated if they think they're getting something inexpensive but lending themselves to the belief that what they purchase is of greater value than the hard cash they're parting with to own it.

And too stupid to realize that they're being indoctrinated into a quasi-consumer religion. And that, in the process, they're allowing themselves willingly, eagerly, to be herded like sheep into a vast strand of corridors that will take them on a 1.3-kilometre hiking expedition from the front door to the checkout area. There is no straight-and-narrow short-cut from a selected product to the cash.

All those who enter must submit to the ritual of being firmly guided throughout the entire warehouse, the size of 7 football fields, on three levels, before they are permitted to escape its confines. Difficult to believe that people are so dazzlingly biddable.