Word of the Day: Microlooting
Is stealing from Whole Foods sticking it to the man, or just shoplifting?
I was kind of shocked to see an odd NYTimes podcast — I just read the transcript — in which the term ‘microlooting’ was used to describe pilfering from Whole Foods and other businesses emblematic of capitalist dominance of the economy:
Nadja Spiegelman: I’m proposing a new term: Microlooting. People are taking small things from big corporations and they’re feeling justified. But is it a slippery slope? What’s going on with our moral code?
| Nadja Spiegelman, Hasan Piker, Jia Tolentino, Vishakha Darbha, ‘The Rich Don’t Play by the Rules. So Why Should I?’
New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino admits to doing it, justifying the behavior as a sort of political act against big corporations and their arch-capitalist owners, like Jeff Bezos and Whole Foods.
This commentary by Suzy Weiss comes close to the normcore reaction, I think:
Apparently a lot of people steal regularly from Whole Foods. Just a few small things, here and there. They’re even getting thrown in the store’s mini-jail for it. It’s a trend, I think, for two reasons. One is that Whole Foods is owned by Amazon, which was founded by Jeff Bezos, who is the third richest man in the world, and whose name has become a synonym for rapacious capitalism. The second is that Whole Foods sells upscale organic groceries and supplements for people who want to boost their collagen.
Meaning, those microlooting Whole Foods are probably not destitute mothers stealing formula for their babies. They are more likely graphic designers stealing probiotics. People who studied “studies” at Seven Sisters colleges. They are disenchanted magazine writers and casting directors who use their parents’ HBO log-ins. In other words, they are downwardly mobile brats who can afford it. And they are telling themselves that by taking without paying—a behavior known to the rest of us as stealing—they are, in fact, engaging in a quiet political protest.
Joel Stein has some harsh words for these micro-Robinhoods:
I know these progressives believe they are leading a future socialist revolution, and their non-college-educated brothers and sisters will embrace them for it. As Piker says,
Concepts such as microlooting indicate that there is an energy there. And yet, many Americans are totally oblivious to this political language. They lack political education. They lack the class consciousness to recognize their position in society, and lack the capacity,
I’m going to guess that the many Americans who lack Piker’s political education think that Brooklynites who steal from Whole Foods are entitled, lazy leeches on society who have bent the system so far in their favor that their worst outcome is 30 minutes in the Whole Foods Jail. They see these entitled three as Little Bezoses, except instead of improving their lives by shipping cheap T-shirts to their doors in 24 hours, they suck money from society by sitting on huge white chairs and getting Kant wrong. These are people who do not know that you can shop somewhere besides Whole Foods.
Snap.