Nowadays it seems that you can’t just have a hobby, a pastime to while away those free moments in your lives or something to raise your interest and enjoyment. No, nowadays you have to go the whole hog and get all of the gear to go with it.
At one time a walk in the country side required nothing more than a hand-knitted jumper, some stout walking shoes and a flask of tea. But now you have to have all of the equipment, a Northface jacket, some breathable trousers that transform into shorts at the tug of a zip and which have forty seven pockets, a compass, a global positioning satellite tracker, high energy food in vacuum packed hi-tech packaging, gaiters and the like. You name it and you’ve got to have it.
At one time a ride on your bicycle required nothing more than a spare inner tube, a bottle of water and some sandwiches wrapped in grease-proof paper. But now you have to have bib-shorts with a chamois padding under the crotch (in the colours of the team that last won the Tour), a Polar heart monitor to keep you out of the red zone, a low wind resistance helmet, ceramic rims and clips that clamp your Sidi shoes to the non-existent pedals.
Even keeping fit has changed. No longer is a pair of plimsolls and a medicine ball enough. Now you have to have some properly cut lycra shorts and a top to match, in a suitably sporty colour-way, a watch to measure your performance with stop start and total elapsed time functions, a water bottle with a hand hole in which you keep your Gatorade and a mat which you unroll before performing your routine.
It’s not just sporting or activity pastimes that are affected though. Every field has its markers which distinguish the in from the out crowd. Your technology for example has to be top notch as well. Your sound system has to be of such a clarity that is beyond the ability of your ears to detect, your telephone has to have a different application for every day of the rest of your life and can answer all of your questions just by asking it. Your laptop has to be the weight of a spider’s web and your television has to have a screen size measured in metres but be as thin as a Ritz cracker with thousands of channels even though you’ll only ever watch half a dozen of them.
I’m sure that this is not a new phenomenon but it seems to be getting more pronounced. The worst of this trend is not just that you have to have all of the latest accoutrements but that you will be looked down upon if you don’t, sneered at by those in the inner clique who have all of the latest must-haves and have already invested heavily in looking the part.
It’s a great shame that people are excluded from things they may well enjoy as they cannot afford the cost of entry whilst on the other hand there are people who have bought into an activity to be part of something that they will never get the hang of. Why can’t you simply enjoy the innocence of a pastime without the sinking feeling of inadequacy or of not belonging? When did you have to compete even before the competition had started? What ever happened to just innocent enjoyment?
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 