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.