Product Placement and Consumer Fads

There are so many ad campaigns out there trying to convince us that their products are “cool” or “hip”, they’ll say just about anything to get us to buy their stuff. And the companies that advertise compete with each other, so the ones who advertise more are more successful. They therefore race to advertise the most. We are bombarded with advertising media to the point that it just becomes a part of our very commercial culture. The companies always compete and push each other to go further and further, to become more and more compelling and convincing. The ones who are more extreme are more successful. Now “extreme” is a part of our culture, or advertisers seem to think it is. I’ve never met anyone who was “extreme” and I don’t want to.

They make a sequel to a movie if the first one made a lot of money. A movie makes a lot of money if a lot of people pay to see it. They start advertising for movies over a year before they are released in theaters. They advertise incessantly. They crap in a box and put a sticker on it that says “super great” and people line up around the block to get it. Then they make a sequel to it. The marketers think “oh, people sure like crap a lot, let’s do it again.” They follow a formula, if you look it becomes obvious. Madagascar did well (despite being poorly done), so they made “The Wild” a year later (also stupid). Or what about Meet the Fockers? It literally was Meet the Parents with a gently shuffled storyline. They follow a linear pattern, the lost luggage on the airplane, “Puff the Magic Dragon”, Owen Wilson, there’s a sport scene where someone is injured, there’s the broken toilet, and it all happens in the same order, it was so annoying that it ruined the movie for me.

It’s even worse for commercial products, cosmetics being the worst. They purposely re-shape our culture and redefine our image of what is acceptable behavior or an acceptable way to live, dress, look or eat. If you don’t use Colgate Max, you’re not every going to score. Chicks dig a guy whose man enough to use the super extreme mach 2000 inter-galactic time warping power of Gillette shaving gel. And it’s all for things you don’t need, that’s why they have to convince you that you need it, they are attempting to suspend disbelief, to confuse you, to indirectly lie to you.

Fuck authority, shop at Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is the Robin Hood of low prices.

You don’t need those things to be happy. You don’t need to be “normal,” what good does it do you? No, stop and think. What if you stopped recognizing brand names and useless societal conventions? What if a woman, or all women stopped wearing make-up, who would actually care? Perhaps you would have to start judging those women based on their integrity rather than their looks. What if people stopped caring about how minty their breath is, or what four out of five orthepediatristologists say is the best brand of cup holder holder. We are all unique individuals and that should be the basis of our culture and society. You are a unique individual. When you conform to advertisements, when you see an ad for something and you suddenly think you like it when you didn’t before, you’re throwing away your individuality. Women wear make-up because it makes them happy, it makes them happy because they feel so worthless without it, they feel vulnerable without their mask. People say they smoke because they like it, they like it for their own reasons or “just because” and it has nothing at all to do with peer pressure or looking cool.

If anyone expects you to ever be anything other than a unique individual, they are the ones who are wrong, not you. You don’t need to conform to a commercially decided standard, in fact, doing so hurts you. You don’t need to be told what to do because what you decide to do is automatically right. You are you, so whatever you decide to do for yourself is completely self justified. You are you, not them. Don’t let yourself be tricked into following the drumbeat of another’s greed, because you’re better than that… drink Pepsi.

People who follow fads are mentally retarded and have no will of their own. Why do so many of you idiots have lip rings? People don’t do things for reasons, they do or feel things because it is inside them to do or feel. A person with sadness looks for reasons, excuses, opportunities to be sad. A person convinced that doing a certain thing is a good idea will invent reasons to justify it without ever realizing why. You, as a person, only do that which you measure as right, therefore everything you do is right, from your perspective anyway, and so anyone who disagrees with you is therefore wrong. Does this mean that you are always right? Or does it mean that you have to actually choose for yourself to be in control of your own destiny. You don’t need reasons to do something, you don’t need a reason to be yourself, and admitting that is the first step to becoming a real person… and you can only do this with the full flavour of the new black hickory smoked one-hundred-and-ten-percent all-beef bacon cheese pig from Arby’s, it’s heli-delicious.



For more on this subject, check out this blog by Brian Clevinger.