I'll buy that for a dollar.

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Do you know what I hate? Advertising. It’s pervasive, invasive, and unless you were lucky enough to be born in Såo Paulo, it’s fucking everywhere. On every wall, on every tram stop, on every television station. Constantly spruiking whatever it is that it spruiks. It’s like a child that never shuts up unless you give it attention but when you give it attention it gets ADD and you have to spend the next 4 hours trying to calm it down. “Look at me” it yells from the television, “Look at me!” it screams from the billboards, from the bus stops. “Look at ME!” it hysterically wails from any social media site you might use. Or online newspaper. Or email account. Or the place you go to check the weather.

And the things that riles me up the most is that advertisers have the guile to say that with social media we are now entering a time of ‘conversation’.  To this I say ‘Bullshit’ and when you start to interrupt I yell “Shut your fucking mouth because I’m talking!” A conversation goes two ways. For the last, what, however long print advertising has been around it’s been a one way ‘conversation’. They talk, or print, we listen, or read. Then television came along creating another wonderful platform for companies to foist their wares upon us. I can’t watch television anymore because of how insulting I find the advertising. It is obvious that in every one of these briefs I am described as a ‘consumer’, like I’m some animal with a voracious appetite going around and shoving whatever I can into my mouth, not caring where it came from, not caring what it is. I find this very insulting for numerous reasons, the main one being that I don’t just blindly consume, I am very aware that the resources on our planet are finite and I worry constantly that the footprint that I’ll leave will be much too large for someone my size. Part of what irks me is also the way we are conditioned to consume, like it’s our only goal. And advertisers, if we’re engaged in this so called conversation, how come you did not hear me when I said ‘Fuck off’, why did you just keep talking like I had not voiced my opinion? What part of “I don’t want you in my life” was so hard to understand?

Another thing that irks me no end is this ‘We’ve listened, we care’ bullshit. I just told you that you don’t listen and this thing you call ‘caring’ is not caring at all, it’s protecting your own interests which are, as always, financially motivated. When a company tells you that they’ve listened and that they care what they’re really saying is ‘We thought we could slip that one by you and you wouldn’t notice, what we’ve done is tweaked it slightly and so hopefully you’ll just buy it and shut up’ or ‘we didn’t think that you’d notice that we were being complete arseholes about that, we’ll pretend we’ve fixed the problem but what we’re going to do is carry on and do the same things with just a little bit more subtly’.

I know that this sounds a lot like hysterical paranoia but think about it like this. A corporation is a whole bunch of people who have got together with one aim in mind, one goal and that goal is to separate you from your money. Sure you might get something in return, but they only have that thing so they can get your money. Think of it in terms of prostitution. They don’t necessarily want you to fuck them, they just want what’s in your wallet and if letting you fuck them is how they get it then so be it. Throw in the fact that advertising plays on fears, (you’re ugly, no one will fuck you so you might as well fuck us) and people are beating a path to their door. They way that advertising plays on peoples fears and insecurities is insidious and possibly evil, if not morally corrupt and morally deficient. And you know the worst thing about advertising?

We let it happen to ourselves. For years magazines aimed at women have done nothing more than make women more self conscious, made women more critical towards each other. And we complain, but we don’t do anything about it. On the other side of the fence, we’ve sexualised our women to the point of over sexualisation, turned them into women with baby lady parts, not a pubic hair to be seen. The modern version of masculinity has way less body hair than it did in the 80’s and is so self obsessed that it “body sculpts”.

The thing is, it’s all about manipulation. Say that to any ad man and he’ll grin and say “Of course!” like it’s something to be proud of, “I lie so well and so often that you don’t even know it!” And yet we continue to buy it, we continue to lap it up. It’s like someone serving us a steaming pile of shit on a plate and instead of throwing it back in their face like we should, we eat it up, we keep steady eye contact and nod our head with every mouthful, smiling the whole time.

Wake up.

MWWS

‎"1st get raped den Get hanged u dog den u will know how it fills"

- Freshta Jan, from the Facebook page, naming and shaming the man accused of the murder of Jill Meagher. 

Australia, we have to talk. There are some things that I feel I need to discuss with you, things concerning the recent case of Jill Meagher. Some of what I’m going to say might be hard to hear but I really think you need to hear it. Everyone seems to have an opinion on this so I’m going to share mine.

First up, the way you originally reacted was wonderful. I woke up on Saturday morning and my social media feed was already clogged with “Help find Jill Meagher” posts. Everybody was on it, and it was an excellent example of the some of the good that social media can do. Everyone uniting for the one cause. Everyone hoping for the best. Clicktivism creating awareness. And the days went by and things started to look worse rather than better, the media had a field day, there was footage of her last moments, people came forward and then someone was arrested. The end.

But oh no, you couldn’t let it go. You had to attach yourself to the case like it meant something to you, worked yourself up into a hysteria, made your grief a public platform on which you could stand and shout “I’m sad about this”. And in doing so, in getting caught up in the mob mentality, you let the monster out, the monster that is stupidity. And I don’t mean one person in particular, I mean all of you as a group. You became a hive mind of activity that only got dumber the larger it became. You showed us the de-evolution is indeed possible, all you need to do is sit behind a computer.

You posted the accuseds name and photo on a public website. Then you posted the phone number and address of someone with a similar name on the same website and then you started calling that number. And then you realised you’d made a mistake and so you took the number down and asked everyone to stop calling it. And then shit just got dumber, and I’m sorry to say that I too got caught up in the moment and I’m afraid that the temptation was too much and I just had to participate.  

SOME IDIOT: Hope you dead in jail fucking cunt

Top of Form

ME:ME: Nice use of language.

SOME IDIOT: Hate that fucking , think say bad word about this guy nice use of language

ME: Have you ever been so far even as decided to use go want to look more like?

SOMEONE ELSE: Well said...

ORIGINAL IDIOT: I hate guyz who rope women that is yurk

ANOTHER DUDE: Like think for should go happen when because potato?

IDIOT AGAIN: I don't care what u think , he will get karam at him for what he has done to the poor girl

ME: Not sure if serious...

And then, internet, you created an account in Jill Meaghers name and insinuated that she was a slut who deserved it. Tsk tsk internet. Posting on her RIP page under her killers name and under an account claiming that he was innocent. Ha ha internet, you are so funny, I have not seen that done a thousand times before. Where do you get such comic brilliance? You trolled, oh how you trolled, from early morning to late at night, I watched the whole thing. It was actually really boring, but the only other thing on was the grand final and there just wasn’t enough real emotion in that for me. But online, oh, the emotions flowed thick and fast.  

It’s like you just let go completely. You lost control of your emotions and let it all out, on the internet and on the street. You held a candlelit vigil at the shop where she was last seen? Does that not strike you as a bit odd? You all gathered and shed tears… for a stranger. I’m not saying your grief is not acceptable, what I am saying though is it is inconsistent. What was the last tear stained vigil you attended? What would motivate you to attend another one? Will you do it for everyone who is murdered or just those you deem the innocent? Thank god you don’t live in Mexico where in 2011 there were, on average, 49 kidnappings a day. You’d shit your pants, you’d be dehydrated from all the tears that would pour out of you.

I have read too many “It could have been me” stories this week that now none of them actually ring true. You know what? It could have been anyone, it was a random attack. A quote from todays peace march goes like this "The nature of your passing is not acceptable, and you have bought a community together to show we will not tolerate it.", which is good because what they’re talking about is murder and it would be a terrible thing if it were tolerable. There are already many many laws against it, and infact it is deemed highly unacceptable to kidnap and rape women in most societies and has been for a long time.

I get what you’re saying. The fact that violence against women is still prevalent in our society is a reprehensible thing, but this is not your standard domestic violence, this is a random opportunistic attack.

What you’re all up in arms about is an aberration, a deviation from the norm. Men don’t usually go out looking for women to rape and kill, it is not the usual motivation for going out on Friday night. The thing that scares you is the fact that she was taken from a place that you know and call safe and that has shaken up your world view and you’re all disoriented and lashing out blindly. “It could happen to anyone”, well, not really, this sort of thing is actually quite rare. “But there’s heaps of people around and someone should have seen something”, yeah, well, King st always has heaps of people around and no one ever calls it the safest street in Melbourne, and maybe someone should have seen something but we’re talking about it being nearly two in the morning and everyone being under the influence of alcohol. How much detail do you notice at two in the morning when you’ve been drinking for a few hours? I’m going to go ahead and say ‘Not much”.

I’m not saying that women can’t walk the streets alone, what I’m saying is that everyone is in some kind of danger when they are by themselves at night in an urban environment, it has nothing to do with gender, it has to do with the fact that we are human and humans are fucked and do fucked shit to each other. It would be nice to say “We should all be free and safe” but we just can’t, there will always be the deviations from the norm, there will always be some spanner in the works, because we’re human, and as I said, humans are fucked.

It really bothers me how you took all that grief and let it out, grief for someone you’d never met no less. You openly said things like “I never knew her but I feel there’s a hole in my heart” and you wept for the cameras. You said such inane things like “God needed another soul so he took yours” like you were desperate to be a sound bite.

And where are you now? Do you think about her every day? Do you help hand out wanted posters of all the other lost and missing people?

Enjoy your life.