In spring 2020, as COVID-19 shutdowns began, New York City-based writer-filmmaker Julio Vincent Gambuto found himself at loose ends. After years of jobs that required him to bounce between the East and West coasts, life abruptly slowed, and as he stared at this computer screen, questions bubbled up.
Please Unsubscribe, Thanks: How to Take Back Our Time, Attention, and Purpose in a World Designed to Bury Us in Bullshit
By Julio Vincent Gambuto
AVID Reader Press, 336 pages
Publication date: August 8, 2023
“It actually drove me mad,” Gambuto tells The Progressive. “Why was I getting emails from Home Depot? How did all these ads get in front of me? I have a background in marketing, and I quickly understood why the messaging, whether it came from political parties, banks, or businesses, sounded the same. They all use the same platforms and techniques.”
Gambuto found this startling realization depressing. However, in “Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting,” an essay he wrote for Medium in April 2020—which has since been read by more than twenty-one million people—he offered a profoundly simple antidote: If every crisis also contains an opportunity, human beings could use the pandemic to think about their lives and exert some control over their time, money, and social engagements.
His own life was a case in point, and Gambuto began a massive campaign of unsubscribing. “I attacked my inbox,” he writes in Please Unsubscribe, severing ties to “brands, companies, gurus, influencers, groups, associations, committees, political campaigns, loyalty programs, monthly-curated clothing boxes that automatically debited my checking account and sent me plaid dress shirts I didn’t need to iron or tuck into my pants . . . Click. Goodbye.”
The resultant liberation, he explains, led him to question our country’s relentless fixation on consumption, the not-so-gentle nudge to purchase items we don’t need and can ill afford.
“We’re wiped out and have no time,” he writes in the book, “because our bodies, minds and hearts are living in real-life human time but we are stuck in a world where our subscriptions are running at the speed of light.” The lack of down-time, he continues, has pushed us to become numb: “Life is no longer full of joy punctuated by bullshit,” Gambuto declares. “It is full of bullshit punctuated by joy.”
Reversing this and restoring personal pleasure, for the author, rests with limiting our association with five Big Forces: Big Banks, Big Brands, Big Media, Big Politics, and Big Tech. He encourages readers to unsubscribe from all of them, take a break, and then decide which, if any, to allow back in.
Needless to say, this can be easier said than done. But as Gambuto tells The Progressive, unsubscribing can give us time to parse the “sticky stories”—ideas we’ve unconsciously absorbed about race, gender, economic inequality, sexuality, consumption, American exceptionalism, and even capitalism. “People’s lives are usually a collection of light-bulb moments that relate to their experiences,” he says. “When we break down what we’ve been taught, we can step away from ideas that are nonsense. This is the first step.”
The book is overtly critical of capitalist excess. At the same time, Gambuto advocates “fixing, not replacing” it, and recommends a bevy of reforms to soften capitalism’s most lacerating edges.
Indeed, the book—Gambuto describes it as “self-help meets the system”—is overtly critical of capitalist excess. At the same time, he advocates “fixing, not replacing” it, and recommends a bevy of reforms to soften capitalism’s most lacerating edges.
“The pandemic opened my eyes,” Gambuto admits. “I was shocked that millions of kids were at risk of starvation when the schools that fed them two meals a day closed. I am still shocked that the Flint and Jackson water crises have been allowed to go on and on. I was also shocked to learn that the Federal Trade Commission, the agency responsible for protecting consumers from fraud and deception, was given only $430 million in Fiscal 2023, an amount that is laughably small for a country with [more than] 300 million people.”
Why not advocate for socialism? I ask.
For Gambuto, pressuring lawmakers for incremental reforms is the best way to bring about political change. “The act of replacing capitalism, at this point in our history, is daunting,” Gambuto says. “We can change public policy to reflect a more manageable way of living.”
For Gambuto, pressuring lawmakers for incremental reforms is the best way to bring about political change.
And the book offers an abundant array of concrete suggestions on ways to do this.
First, the personal: In addition to getting off email lists, he urges readers, for better financial oversight, to pay bills once a month by check rather than autopay. He also recommends using a credit union instead of a bank and getting together with friends in real life whenever possible. Other counsel involves limiting time on social media, answering and checking personal email only once a day, demanding that politicians promote the common good, understanding the power of collective over individual action, and joining or forming a union. He also reminds us that we need to buy less, drive less, and be more mindful of our environmental impact.
As for the political, Gambuto urges us to demand that our government crack down on corporations that manipulate the law to avoid taxation, penalize companies that treat workers as expendable, and ramp up fines against businesses that price gouge. He also criticizes the promotion of violence as a solution to conflict—whether by ramping up surveillance, policing communities, or increasing military expenditures. Lastly, the “dystopia where a CEO makes 320 times the salary of the average worker” needs to be denounced until our elected officials do something to rein them in.
These, of course, are cogent suggestions, and would likely lead to a happier, healthier population. But are they enough? Probably not.
Reminding our elected officials that they represent “the interests of the greater We,” and holding the Big Forces to account, is a good place to get the ball rolling.
While Gambuto tiptoes around this reality, he’s also clear that we can use our collective rage as a powerful goad to effect social improvement. And he’s right that incremental change is better than stasis. After all, when we unsubscribe, we free up space for things that matter. “The blending of business, entertainment, and politics,” he concludes in Please Unsubscribe, “is proving disastrous for our democracy.”
Reminding our elected officials that they represent “the interests of the greater We,” and holding the Big Forces to account, is a good place to get the ball rolling.