Woodland and Rivertown Malls

I went to the mall three different times in the past two days. Two of the times I went to Woodland Mall, while the other time I went to Rivertown Mall in Grandville. The first time I went to Woodland I didn't really notice any of the advertising because I wasn't looking for anything in particular, however I did end up buying things that I didn't need. I bought some pants and some boots because (after reflecting later) I felt pressured to be fashionable by the pictures hanging up in the store. When I went to Rivertown I was helping my brother shop for clothes. I didn't buy anything, but as he was trying on clothes I began to notice the religious and persuasive qualities of the mall. Specifically, we were in Macy's. Macy's has signs everywhere that talk about the "loyalty credit card." Noticing the credit card advertisements made me ponder what is the redeeming quality of spending money you don't have with a card for only the loyal members? That logic, to me seems flawed. The card goes to show how people begin to worship the mall and feel the need to buy something simply because they are at the mall and have to show their "loyalty" whether or not they have extra money to spend on unneeded goods. The third time I went to the mall was to return the boots that I bought on my first trip. After returning them I noticed signs in mall that said "be a pig" and "be a tool." I didn't bother to read the rest of the advertisement, but I know that "be a pig" encourages people to buy more because they're convinced that they deserve new things, and "be a tool" encourages people to buy high end stuff that makes them feel like a "tool."
The mall functions as a religious center competing for devotion and loyalty by convincing you that it has what you need to be happy. While Christianity teaches that material possessions don't mean anything, the mall is trying to convince you that the only way to be happy is buy more stuff. The big pictures of happy people on storefronts is a technique that pulls at your emotions, just like a church sermon might, to make you feel like you can be that happy if you buy into what the smiling, happy, airbrushed people in the pictures are attempting to sell.
As relating to the Pahl chapter, I could definitely see the fake-ness and the amount of unnecessary things in the mall. Granted, there's not a wedding chapel in either of the malls I visited, but the mentality of quick-and-easy was abundant. Just as Pahl mentioned when the worker in the chapel ignored him and his family, the relationships between store personnel and clients are shallow and only worth the amount of money spent in the store. Often, when I visited an expensive store I was ignored because I'm a kid and the clerks assume that I can't afford their clothes. Within the depravity of the mall, there are emotional times to be had, but overall the mall is a wanna-be religious experience that lacks depth and character.