On Why Shopping Malls are Postmodern Hellholes. (Patreon)

One time during my undergraduate experience, I wrote a long-winded, confusing, and dismal essay on postmodernism. And I ended the thing by saying it's a vague concept without any definite meaning and the whole premise is that there are no definite meanings or truth anyway.

So even now, I enjoy using the word, and if someone challenges me I can say "it doesn't mean anything anyway" and I am at once being a complete smartass while also being not absolutely and completely wrong. Besides, I really like the combination of 'postmodern' and 'hellhole' and every postmodernist piece of literature I've ever read made me feel like I was in a hellhole reading about another hellhole. So, that's the title, and no, it doesn't really mean anything; I just find it amusing. I'm pretending it refers to the postmodern era, which I believe we are technically still in? Someone correct me if I'm wrong, or don't. I enjoy pretending to be correct.

Anyway.

I went to the mall in Nashville yesterday. I never go to the mall. I definitely never go to indoor shopping malls as I much prefer, when a gun is held to my head (obvious hyperbole), the outdoor shopping malls. I mostly prefer the outdoor shopping malls for several key reasons as follows: they are generally empty at any time the weather is not optimal, they cannot trap you in a box and force you to listen to music that lacks any artistic merit everywhere you go, there are generally better restaurants there (restaurants are a key part of my shopping experience, it really breaks up the monotony of shopping), you have the ability to pretend you are walking around instead of slumping about unwillingly with no good purpose in life because you could have done this at home on a personal laptop, and finally, it doesn't smell bad because you're not trapped in a giant stupid box with intermingling smells of food court food, shitty perfume, chemical fabric smell, and febreze from ugly bathrooms. There's air circulation at outdoor malls is what I'm trying to get at here.

In any case, I went to the mall in Nashville yesterday. It is an indoor shopping mall, and the first thing I was greeted by upon my entrance was a giant aquarium restaurant. A restaurant with fish tanks full of fish surrounding you while you eat. A "dining experience" is what they labeled it. Because clearly something other than food and a reasonably decent conversation partner (I didn't say "good," I said "decent") is necessary during lunchtime at the mall. In any case, apparently it was a catastrophe during a flood a few years back. Because on top of being a monumental waste of resources and showing a shocking lack of taste, this is a saltwater aquarium, and the flood caused all of the fish to die as their tanked filled with fresh water. And then afterwards they rebuilt it. In the same location. With more saltwater fish. My god.

Next to that was a Madame Tussaud's. Of course there was.

I stood in front of the mall map, which was in front of a row of massage chairs and mechanical car rides - because you need a map to find a place to buy socks - and was happy that this mall had quiet music. Almost non-observant really, very quiet. Like a distant hum in the background. The distant hum of the most boring melody you'll hear all day. Then I went to this store Forever 21. Because they're cheap and so am I. 

Did you know that Forever 21 has no real organization to their entire clothing enterprise in-store? Yes, they organize by "style" - whatever that means. Upon observation it seems to mean "poorly and probably falling off of the hanger in the wrong section and no we don't know where the socks are and those are all the pajamas unless there are some somewhere else." Yes, organization. Top-notch organization.

Onto my existential crisis regarding socks purchasing...

For me, wool socks that are long enough to wear with boots have meaning - they mean my feet will stay warm, the socks will likely last a decent amount of wear time, and I will have spent money in a way that seems to guarantee something of value comparable to the amount of money I spent on it. Oh, but not in a shopping mall! In shopping malls they do not sell socks like this the vast majority of the time. Instead, they sell ankle socks (not good for boot wearing), thin socks (why, it is winter and socks are a layering item), goofy patterned socks (just sell me some socks I swear), toe socks (no), half foot socks (yes, socks that cover half of a foot), and et cetera. They sell all sorts of socks that have no value or meaning and thus they make life have no value or meaning. Do you like wearing crappy socks? I don't. Do you feek noticeably worse when you wear crappy socks? I do. Do you feel like your life loses a little bit of meaning when your socks are not constructed with integrity as to what a sock is and should be and can be? I do.

And then you find yourself, standing in a store with a horrible layout in a shopping mall in the Bible Belt holding up a pair of socks while you listen to a pop-ballad surrounded by teenage employees, and you think "My life has no purpose. This is what I am spending time doing." And then you hand them a couple bucks for a pair of socks that they put in a bag with a Bible verse on the bottom of it. John 3:16. What does Jesus dying for my sins have to do with my buying socks?