I’m coining this new term, “Guilgry” for the combo of guilt and anger I feel when I see those “1 Million Women” type posts on Facebook. You know the ones I mean, that tell you oh-so-simply FIVE THINGS YOU CAN DO TO REDUCE PLASTIC USE IN THE HOME TODAY! Oh yeah… and it mostly involves spending ages online searching out kooky products that cost 3x as much as the old ones and then further guilt-tripping your friends into doing the same. But you feel worse if you don’t do it. And then you get angry because, why aren’t more people doing this? But then you also get ragey because IT’S JUST NOT THAT SIMPLE – like, how are these eco products produced anyway, and what about when they eventually are used up and have to go to landfill and everyone just wants a simple solution to absolve themselves so they no longer have to keep thinking but we should always be THINKING and if you’re actually thinking, you’ll realise it’s never that fucking easy and it’s all just a bloody marketing trick and, really: follow the money. Because someone somewhere is making a fucktonne bunch of money offof all our guilt and that also makes me wild. But what about also making a difference and maybe I’m not even willing to, so I feel mad at myself and also a little ashamed and then my friends are sharing it and saying Oh Wow, Yes, Look How Simple It IS and all it costs is more money and if everyone did it, but what about the poor people? If it’s inaccessible to the poor it’s neither radical nor revolutionary and If it can’t be reduced, reused, repaired, rebuilt, refurbished, refinished, resold, recycled or composted, then it should be restricted, redesigned or removed from production. Now I’ve got that churny gut feeling that signifies the roiling impotence of my existence, if not the entire human race’s. And anyway, after the runaway success of Hangry, I’m coining it: Guilgry.

Rage against the plastic photo: by Cristian Newman on Unsplash