The Dixie Fire — Northern California’s most pressing blaze so far this wildfire season — has burned over 60,000 acres and is just 15% contained. Parts of the East Bay have declared record-breaking levels of drought; the ocean waters off the Pacific Northwest got so hot during this month’s heatwave that it triggered a massive marine die-off event; cetaceans (i.e. the dolphins, porpoises, and whales of the world) continue washing up along the San Francisco Bay due to fatal collisions with cargo and fishing ships.

Today, Jeff Bezos and three accompanying crew members boarded the phallic-shaped New Shepard spacecraft to penetrate the planet’s atmosphere at three times the speed of sound. It’s unclear as to how much exactly it cost to send the 59-foot penis rocket into earth’s orbit. Still, we do know for a fact that Bezos, himself, funded Blue Origin — the aerospace company he founded in 2000 — at the sum of $1 billion a year while serving as CEO of Amazon.

Donning a Joanne-era hat, the man responsible for ostensibly defining the e-commerce market as we know it rang a large bell after touching down in the West Texas desert Tuesday morning to celebrate his and his crew’s safe return. That brief moment of release was quickly followed up with the sentiment that he had “the best day ever.”

Jeff Bezos didn’t necessarily thank Amazon employees and customers today… as much as he did point out his exploitation of them for his own personal gains. It’s a level of narcissism that is truly out of this world.

With him was a crew that included his brother, Oliver Daemen, the 18-year-old son of a Dutch hedge fund manager (who took the place of an anonymous person at the last minute), and Wally Funk, an 82-year-old test pilot who trained as an astronaut in the 1960s — and is now the oldest person ever to make it into space.

“I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because you guys paid for all of this,” said Jeff Bezos — whose net worth still hovers around $205 billion after leaving his post as CEO of Amazon earlier this year — about his voyage into space Tuesday during a press conference. And in that short, yet profoundly tone-deaf statement, the 57-year-old white man from New Mexico showed his worrisome inability to read the fucking room.

By acknowledging that “every Amazon employee” and “every Amazon customer” paid for “all of this,” Bezos, more or less, admitted that those people who contributed to his dizzying wealth paid for this frivolous joy ride; his shot at becoming a space cowboy before turning 60.

He thanked all the Amazon employees who’ve risked their lives during this pandemic to work in unsafe distribution centers — afraid of the financial pitfalls that may come from missing a day’s work.

Let’s not commend the tireless work of Amazon employees and spending prowess of customers by taking a dildo into space.

He thanked the Amazon delivery drivers who’ve come out of the woodwork to admit they’ve resorted to peeing in bottles, making sure packages are delivered on time, all while at the mercy of omnipresence surveillance technologies.

He acknowledged the customers who have fallen prey to Amazon’s play on our brain’s instant reward system that’s now, somehow, synonymized quality of life with same-day shipping — drastically increasing our rates of mindless spending.

He applauded the carbon-heavy e-commerce model he’s built; the same infrastructure that was the demise of local independent bookstores across the United States and released 51.17 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere last year.

Jeff Bezos didn’t necessarily thank Amazon employees and customers today as much as he pointed out his exploitation of them for personal gains. It’s a level of narcissism that is truly out of this world.

So, no: Don’t commend the tireless work of Amazon employees and the spending prowess of customers by taking a dildo into space. That’s not how being a whole human being works.

Instead, actively advocate for workplace safety and livable wages amongst your employees — chiefly among them being those who are on the warehouse floor. Create transparency around the consumerism habits Amazon has created, and the environmental impacts generated by expediting purchases (amongst other convenient means of supply transport). Don’t hide behind the guise of lofty charity donations thrown at nonprofits trying to, quite literally, fix the cataclysmic, dehumanizing problems you’ve had a large hand in creating

Until those things are resolved in tangible ways, the sentiment still stands: Y’all, fuck Jeff Bezos.

Feature Image: Jeff Bezos walks near the booster after his flight on Blue Origin’s New Shepard into space on July 20, 2021, in Van Horn, Texas. Mr. Bezos and the crew that flew with him were the first human spaceflight for the company. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)