1/28/2000


Do you own a trendy tech vest?


     I can’t take it anymore!  I can't even turn my head anywhere without seeing a tech vest.  
Vests, vests everywhere!  I don't mean just the Old Navy "Tech Vest" that started everything, 
I mean all of them.  The fleece ones, the generic ones, the puffy ones, the grandma version, 
they all count too.  Does no one have a mind of his or her own?  What possesses people to go and 
buy something so ridiculous looking- a puffy bright colored vest- just because everyone else 
has one?  That alone says so much about the conformity taking over the collective population. 

     The executives at the Gap are sitting in their big corporate window offices right now, 
and they are having a good laugh.  They know that the combination of their catchy commercials 
and the total mind control of the general preppy jock population has you, the average Joe, 
acting like their puppet.  They can do anything and they know it!  They could come out with 
jeans without leg holes, and if they had a few attractive preppy people ice skating in cute outfits, or singing some catchy 
song in their commercial, it’s all over!  Everyone must have them. Forget that no one 
can actually wear them.  Teens all across the world would seriously injure themselves 
trying to figure them out.   The entire population is, collectively, mindless sheep. 
(no personal offense intended).

     The Gap's known for it's ads, "Everyone in vests”, “Everyone in leather”, 
“Everyone in….”  Hello?  No one notices that they are selling you conformity? Please!  What has 
gone so wrong with our generation that we can be influenced to buy something just because 
everyone else has it.  What is actually even more disturbing is the fact that not only has 
everyone bought a tech vest based on the fact that they want to be like everyone else, is 
that that’s how it was advertised!  They told you outright that you should own one for that 
reason, and no one was outraged.  Everyone grazed like the mindless sheep that they are right into 
their local Gap and bought, bought, bought! 


     The Gap can’t be totally blamed though.  They are marketing conformity, and that’s wrong, 
but who is buying?  Everyone!  It makes me sick.  I don’t dress in so called “freak clothes”,  
(that’s a whole separate rant all in itself) but I would never own a tech vest.  And, along 
those same lines, I never bought a pair of Surplus or Cargo pants.  I don’t have an Old Navy 
logo fleece pullover.  I don’t own anything with Abercrombie or Fitch on it.  The main reason 
is just because I can’t seem to make myself buy something when at least 80% of my peers 
will have the exact same thing.  I have to have some kind of identity.  I understand wanting to 
“fit in”, I guess, but at what price?  I wonder if any of the general Tech Vest wearing public 
misses their identity?  All of the Ashleys, Beths, Amys, Mandys, Christy’s, and Megans all kind 
of run together and blur in your mind when they all look, act, and talk the same.  Why doesn’t 
anyone want to stand out anymore?   BE DIFFERENT!
 
     The tech vest infestation explains a lot about the nations drug problem.  If my  generation 
is so easily influenced to spend that much money on a tacky, expensive article of clothing, then 
where do they draw the line?  What stops them from spending next week’s allowance on a few 
doob’s?  (Like my word?)   But if no one has any more sense of what’s going on around him or her, 
and they can be sold conformity by the truckload, the generation in general is doomed.  
Whatever the majority does, all will do.  Drugs?  Already being done.  Sex? Same thing.  
If no one can think for them self, and they 
have all lost their individuality, where did all the people go?    They have become 2 people.  
A chic and a guy.  Let’s call them Ashley and Matt.   Are you a girl aged 10 to 24, in a tech vest 
and flare leg jean?  You are Ashley.  Hey, guy over there, in the tech vest and cargo pants.  
You are Matt.  Since everyone wants to be like everyone else, these new roles should fit 
just fine.  You like Backstreet Boys and ‘N Sync.  Guys, you want to boff Britney Spears, girls, 
you would kill to look like her.  And everyone in vests!


     I don't mean to directly attack anyone, but if you own a tech vest, take a good long look 
at yourself in your piece of puffy bright colored polyester.  Does the loss of your individuality 
look good in powder blue?