It’s just the cope people go through to navigate a worsening economy while lacking class consciousness. If you perpetuate the belief that the responsibility is on the consumer, then you can look at the exploitation and say it’s because they weren’t smart shoppers who did their homework. The system doesn’t need to change, you just need to be smarter.

It’s just another permutation of personal responsibility politics used to ignore the systemic problems we’re seeing. It’s telling customers not to be stupid instead of questioning why videogame companies keep selling low quality garbage with pre-order bonuses to hook people who want to look forward to something.

It’s bad to do the pre-orders and get invested like with Starfield, but the people offering warnings like that are more just trying to prove they are being a smarter shopper. That they won’t get duped by the hype.