The white whale of immature adulthood

So let me begin by assuring you that I realize that there are far more important things to worry about than what I'm about to rail against. The pandemic, voting rights, who's hosting Jeopardy!, lots of things matter more. That said, can we just talk about how aneurysm-inducing it is to try and get one's hands on the new Xbox?

Pictured: the part of the brain responsible for
loosing one's mind over retail scarcity.

They were a nail in the coffin of small
business, but Amazon was the last nail,
so I'm in the clear right? Right?

I mention this because yesterday I got a notification that Walmart was going to restock the new console at noon and then again at nine. And yes, I've become the kind of person that signs up for notifications. Want to know when a Funko Pop is up for preorder? No, me neither, but here we are. And before you judge me know that I boycotted Walmart for years for paying low wages, selling guns, and for being the death of American retail and it's only now that they've begun offering to pay employees' college tuitions that I'm even thinking about buying something from them. Thinking about mind you, but we'll get to that. 

"Take it. Taaaake iiiiiit!"

-Me, evidently

Putting aside my uh, what do you call them? Ethical qualms? I decided that I'd try to snag an Xbox from Walmart. So the time came, I hit refresh again until the "add to cart" button appeared. I hit it and nothing. Sold out. It sold out in actual seconds. The notification had said that the store would make more available every ten minutes for the next hour so I sat there until one, finger hovering over the refresh waiting, but to no avail. Sold out every time. Ok, fine, I'll just wait for the next batch at nine. I mean, what else am I going to do, not give them my money?

So nine p.m. rolls around and this time I get a button that says "press and hold" so I did. It was some new captcha thing they apparently decided to implement since earlier that day. I suppose it was designed to screen out the bots. You know, that software dirtbags use to snap up scarce items and then resell them at an inflated price?

I'm sure the programing skill required to create software capable
of pressing and holding is far beyond the capabilities of resellers.
I mean, that's just the stuff of science fiction. 

While we were pressing and holding like a
bunch of chumps, some reseller was putting
 the last Xbox up on eBay at a $300 markup.

Super, so Walmart was finally doing something about that. Except no. The progress bar filled up, and I got a check mark, but nothing happened. And it wasn't just me, my fellow grown-ass adults on twitter seemed to be experiencing the same frustrations. It went on like this for an hour while I sat there holding the button, reevaluating the life choices that led me to spend my evening trying in vane to hand a symbol of everything wrong with capitalism five hundred dollars. This is actually the third time I've tried to order one of these, so you'd think I'd have learned, but no. 

I'm not even sure I could tell you why I want one at this point beyond the fact that they're impossible to find. But buying something from Walmart? In the end all I'll have done is surrendered five hundred dollars and my self-respect and for what? A slightly improved version of a game console that's already taking up too much of my time and space under the TV? Has it come to this? Well, it does has ray-tracing--whatever that is--so yes, I guess it has indeed come to this.

Pictured: basically.