In actuality, the meaning of this article can be taken to mean “stop buying useless stuff you don’t need and live a lifestyle of reduced material possessions”, but I decided to single out “plastic crap” as the embodiment of useless things that you don’t need-because of three reasons: it’s expensive, it never has and will never serve any purpose, and it actively makes you a worse person for owning it.

To clarify, by “plastic crap”, I mean action figures, figurines, statuettes, and the like-whether they be Western or Eastern, powered superheroes or little anime girls in compromising positions, plastic crap is the epitome of the sorts of “childish things” that need to be put away.

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying video games, anime, schlocky cinema, etc.-I myself do on occasion. But buying the associated 3rd party paraphernalia for these things is beyond the pale in my eyes-a “line in the sand” which might seem a bit arbitrary, but I feel is logical when you consider the three things above:

1) The expense-taking a casual glance on a website that sells plastic crap, we can see this 8-incher costing well above 100 dollars, in comparison to the corresponding anime which will ring you up approximately 0 dollars if you’re smart, and no more than 20 dollars if you want to be honest/dumb. At this point I have to ask: couldn’t you save the money you’d spend on this statuette and buy more of the source media that this character originated in? In this context, I can at least tolerate a poster or something similar, because the money you’d spend on a poster wouldn’t be enough to buy more than two week’s worth of groceries.

This leads me directly into the second point:

2) The uselessness of them-to go back to the previous paragraph, if you buy a figurine of some cartoon character, couldn’t you buy multiple episodes/comics of that franchise with all the money that you spent? Wouldn’t that give you much more entertainment value then a doll?

And the above paragraph has me assuming that the figure in question has joints capable of articulation-the only thing a grown man could buy that’s possibly more useless than an action figure is a non-articulated statue. In either case, what business does any self-respecting adult man have playing with dolls? While I fully understand the need to have entertainment, there are so many better ways of going about it-to name one example, passively watching a film or television show can be combined with, y’know, actually doing something constructive-try working out or doing school work while watching something.

3) It actively makes you a worse person-a common argument I often hear to justify purchasing plastic crap is that it “shows your fandom and loyalty to the franchise in question”. And to that I say-you shouldn’t define yourself based on some mass-market product! If you’re reading my website, you’re probably fairly well versed in neo-masculinity/the alt right, and thus you are also anti-globalism and against corporations having too much of a say in public affairs-the latter being an issue that the alt-right has in common with the left, at least ostensibly

Anti-corporate arguments and anti-globalist arguments are rightfully intertwined: they cheapen the culture and identity of their markets, bringing every nation down to the same lowest-common-denominator garbage. Open borders and free trade are part and parcel with that, as everybody having the same (low) culture means you’ve successfully reduced the world to a giant market. Just to clarify, I’m not saying corporations are inherently bad-if they create a useful product to you, then use it. I’m just saying you shouldn’t let them create your culture and way of life-in other words, consume less and create more

When you get down to it, proudly displaying some plastic crap (or any other merch for that matter) comes off to me as essentially wearing a flag proudly displaying your corporate loyalty, far beyond just having the “core merchandise” (ie: the source material of said fictional character).

And while I would make an exception for cases where you were given said plastic crap as a gift,  the thesis of this article remains: if you want to start living a life worth living, a life of thumos and something resembling masculinity, a good “first step” to take is to stop buying plastic crap.