The Backdoor of Luxury and Digital Lubricants

Location: The city's most pretentious, marble-floored, ultra-luxury boutique where a French song whispers in the background. Product: A bag that can only fit half a lipstick and a single AirPod, but because it has an Italian word on it, the price tag is exactly 150,000 Euros. Or maybe a plain white t-shirt that costs a minimum wage salary just because it has a microscopic horse logo on the right chest.

Now let's be honest: What would happen if they asked you for this 150,000 Euros in cash? You would have to enter that store with a shopping cart full of high-denomination banknotes. While counting that money at the register, bill by bill, you would sweat, cry, suffer existential crises, and by the tenth stack, you would shout, "What the hell am I doing? I could buy a plot of land with this money!" and throw the bag in the middle of the aisle and run away. Cash would wake you up. Physical pain would scream at you that you are being robbed.

But the luxury consumption sector isn't stupid. They never let you feel that pain. Because a bloody robbery scares the customer; whereas an anesthetized robbery makes the customer feel "special."

Cheeks Served on a Silver Platter

The moment arrives. The sales assistant, Tristan, looks at you with his fake, respectful smile and extends the black, sleek POS machine on a silver platter. That machine is the narrow, dark, and insatiable plastic cheeks of the system.

How did it used to be? You had to swipe the card all the way through the deep slit on the side of that machine. There was friction. There was effort. You could feel a fraction of the transaction's brutality. You would force your credit card—meaning three months of your labor, your overtime, the scoldings you took from your boss—through that dark slit.

But luxury capitalism saw that even this friction made the customer sick to their stomach, so it immediately deployed its magnificent invention: Contactless Payment.

Contactless payment is a digital lubricant tenderly applied by the system so that you don't get hurt during a high-stakes robbery. There is no longer a need to enter between those cheeks, no friction, not even a physical touch. It is enough to just lightly bring your so-called "prestigious" black credit card made of titanium (which is also the VIP ticket to your lifelong indebtedness) close to the machine.

A Sweet "BEEP" and the End of the Robbery

Just a polite, little touch... BEEP. Transaction complete. 150,000 Euros evaporated. The price of a kidney vanished into thin air in milliseconds.

Not a single scuffle broke out, nor did anyone's nose bleed. The smoothest, most flawless robbery in the world just took place right in the middle of that marble-floored store. And do you know what the funniest part is? When the transaction is over, you flash a huge smile to the people who just legally robbed you blind and say, "Thank you so much." They even escort you to the door.

Then the machine, just like in the previous example, heralds the end of that ritual. That thin, white receipt curving out from underneath it, smelling of luxury and bearing the brand's logo... It's the thin toilet paper proudly handed to you by the system after completing the transaction through those giant cheeks.

You step outside. In your hand, you hold that massive cardboard shopping bag with the brand's name written in giant letters. A meaningless smirk of prestige on your face... Walking down the street, you think everyone is looking at that bag, marveling at how elite you are. Meanwhile, in the back room, the system has already plugged that little black machine into the charger for its next customer, waiting for the new victim to slide their wallet through that slit.