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| − | '''The Story of Stuff''' is a short video purporting to explain the [[consumerism|consumeristic]] society in the United States and how it is environmentally unsustainable. | + | '''The Story of Stuff''' is a short video by [[liberal]] activist and filmmaker Annie Leonard purporting to explain the [[consumerism|consumeristic]] society in the [[United States]] and how it is [[environmentalism|environmentally unsustainable]]. The video also purports to demonstrate the life cycle of manufactured goods, from extraction to disposal. |
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| | + | The video has come under fire for multiple serious inaccuracies, and at times the video appears more like an anti-capitalist invective. Despite this, it is commonly shown [[public school]] classrooms in America, and it has been translated into numerous other languages. |
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| | + | ==Examples of Over-the-Top Rhetoric and Inaccuracies== |
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| | + | *When discussing production, the video states matter-of-factly, "We use energy to mix toxic chemicals in with the natural resources to make toxic contaminated products.” |
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| | + | *When describing [[planned obsolescence]], the film claims that the processor or CPU is the part of a computer that causes it to be obsolete. It also claims that new processors are made in different shapes to prevent them from being backward-compatible with older computers. This is essentially dishonest; almost all the parts of a computer eventually become obsolete, not just the processor. Furthermore, even if new processors did physically fit into old computers, it would be extremely difficult for manufacturers to make them backward-compatible. A computer is like a single unit, and one new part can't just be installed in place of an older part, because their software capabilities (e.g. architectures, interfaces, etc. are often quite different. |