Nothing sacred

Yesterday I posted a list of grad student disorders, but I have since discovered that there are many more syndromes affecting grads. Furthermore, my faculty seems to be particularly fertile ground for new disorders to pop up. Let see if we can communally figure out the disease that affects this girl whom I have to consider a colleague.

Here is the latest Brita ad. Pretty aggressive, huh? Well, this girl in my faculty found it appalling. So much so, that she decided to email the entire listserv to communicate us her despair. That’s normal. Lots of people do that in this faculty. It makes you look concerned. She also suggested that we boycott Brita from now on. Again, that’s acceptable, it makes you feel like you are holier than thou.

(Aside: See, my faculty has an unwritten rule about militancy; I refer to it as the "monthly activist quota". Basically, you must continuously identify sources of oppression (real or otherwise), display contempt for all forms of lucrative opportunities, sign petitions to save fuzzy charismatic mega-fauna, and the like).

But the girl writes us all half an hour later to share with us the letter that she personally sent to Brita. Preach it sister! And it's so sad, she tells Brita that we are “entering unprecedented times” and signs off with "Shame on you". Yeah, I can see the director of marketing at Brita being real ashamed. More like, s/he is wondering why are 5-year olds boycotting their product. And again, if you must boycott someone, why not boycott the municipal utility that's obviously wasting resources in providing potable water to flush a toilet?

So that was amusing, but then 10 minutes later, another person joined her to tell us that she doesn’t “support paranoia-and-stereotype-provoking and extraneous consumer industries” either. I had to read this sentence three times before I sorted out the combination of adjectives and adverbs. But I finally got it. Except that I was unaware that there was a stereotype created around “Brita filter haves” and “Brita filter have-nots”. Live and learn.

So the good news is that you can safely drink your toilet water, although house dogs had figured that much eons ago. The bad news is that you may need to through away your $20 Brita filter if you want to fulfill your activist quota for this month.

Is there nothing sacred anymore?