If you think ADS are cool and friendly and on your side, you need to wake up now.
People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you're not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them.
BANKSY.
I haven't used public transportation in a long time in Bucharest. Yesterday, I was at the subway and noticed SO many screens. Screens everywhere, broadcasting "funny news" and ADS all day, every day.
They have this section called " A holiday for your eyes" where they just post a short video of an exotic place. What kind of cruel joke is this?!
Then there's an AD that lasts 30 seconds. Stupid ads. Recurrent ads. Seen the same AD 4 times while waiting 9 minutes for a subway train. I look somewhere else and what? Still more ADS! Billboards behind the rails, posters on the chairs. You know how it is, you probably have a version of this in your town.
I go into the subway train and, sure enough, the wals are full of ADS! Vodafone, Orange, Lay's...ADS everywhere, in your face, utterly unavoidable. I pay for this transportation, why do you sell me ads?
I get off and go out and, in the city center, besieged by ADS everywhere. HUGE screens screaming at me, bidding for my attention.
"BUY THIS!!"
"BUY THAT!"
"YOU'LL NEVER BE COOL WITHOUT ME!"
Public transportation buses plastered on the outside with ads, covering even the windows. You can' t see anything anymore for the windows are wrapped in plastic: PEPSI ADS, CK ADS! Where's the respect for people?
Have we given away the small pleasure of looking out the window because some corporation decided that a walking billboard is the best use of their ad money?!
Are we really sitting here, in the crowded bus, squashed like pigs in a tiny pen -privilege for which we pay money -blind to where we are, save for the glimpse we get when the doors open at a stop, and do NOTHING?!
FUCK THAT. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It's yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don't owe then any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs.
BANKSY
Now, nothing of this is new, of course. Romania has been brutalized and raped by ads post- 1990. What is new, is the way I look at all this. Maybe it's steemit's anarchism that got to me, but I went home yesterday feeling...attacked and tired.
When I get home, I open the TV. If I DARE, that is for more ADS are waiting for me. 15 minutes AD breaks, for every 30 minutes of whatever. How can you enjoy anything? And why do we just accept it?
In the morning I got to my gym. It's a rather expensive one for Bucharest. Now I notice again: ADS! Nivea in the showers, Energy pills in the aerobic studio, Snack at the reception and constant reminder on the screens.
I PAY FOR ENTRY! There's no public service, why the ads?!
It's like I pay to be targeted, packaged and sold to the highest bidder.
I just feel sick of it all.
I get that in capitalism ads are necessary, I get that competition raised the prices of ads and everything runs on them. I get that the alternatives are possibly gloomier and that I need to be a good consumer for all this to work, but what if..NO? What If I'm just TIRED of it all?!
I do like some ads, and I always enjoy a good, smart ad....I'm a copywriter, I wrote some ads myself. But the more I think about it, the less sense it makes to accept to be bombarded all the time by this. Even the best, cutest, most amazing ad out there is still just another trick to have you buy this or that.
Solutions?
I have none, I just hope we will find a more humane way to sell me to the corporations ( this in itself is a disheartening way to look at it all). But as it happens, we are now here and the only defense seems to be our mind. To shield it from the constant abuse of ADS for if we bling, they're there again. If we don't fight back, if we don't strive for an equilibruim...
I fear that one day we'll go to sleep and they'll broadcast ADS filled dreams to us.
How sad would that be?
We can all thank Edward Bernays for spawning this monstrosity. He is responsible for dreaming up "targeted advertising and the general shift in western culture from that of buying things we need to buying things we want (and do not need"
Since the birth of his baby, it has turned into a ceaseless, rampant greedy beast, whose appetite will never be sated.
I don't read newspapers, cancelled my TV License, feel nauseous when I'm in shopping districts, ditched the high maintenance, materialistic ex-girlfriend, don't play games anymore & I don't know what half the stuff people around me are going on about nowadays either, because I'm not plugged in to the corporate media and advertising industries.
It all feels like a last ditched free-for-all; one last ruse, to grab the very last of the sheckles before the illusion implodes; the global eco-system and the economy with it.
My T.V, which I solely use to plug my Netflix loaded laptop into, is always only one anger fit away from getting smashed to pieces with a hammer.
You said it very eloquent! And I must agree...the perversity of the system is that if you do all that you are being seen as the WEIRDO! When the whole system is the grotesque mutation....
Then, when you have stepped away from the grotesque perversion, you often find yourself alone. It's a sad state of affairs. Thank f*** for steemit!
What the hell is this?!
I agree, I wonder if it isn't somewhat a "necessary evil" for success of a platform, but also doesn't mean I am a huge fan of the idea, maybe numb to the idea cause it is everywhere.
Good piece though
I have a solution, get vr glasses or the Google glasses, then create a program that blocks all ads from your view. It could replace the ads with what the program would think the ad-less space likely looks like. Boom!
What grinds my gears the most is all of the Prescription DRUG Commercials in America, constantly. I cannot watch an NFL game without seeing a Viagra commercial 12 times! It's like they want to drill into my head I need that drug in order to have sex! No, I'm good leave me the F alone.
Raz, I know what you're saying.
I use the subway daily but have my eyes on my kindle or phone all the time.
I cut off the TV subscription a long time ago. I have a TV but we use it rarely to watch something I torrented or streamed off Netflix and that's about it.
And off course, I have AdBlocker added to the browser.
I still can't get over the fact that public buses can cover the windows.
I know what you're saying, we all do the same, no? But the idea here is that keeping your head down shouldn't be the norm...
Not saying we should keep our head down, but we would be fighting a $220.55bn industry.. 220 billion man. https://www.statista.com/topics/979/advertising-in-the-us/
The best to do I think is smart purchasing not lead by ads. I try to not buy stuff I see in adds or in spamming newsletters.
it's a dire situation. The world is controlled by large cooperations. Bit by bit they are taking away everything from us. Today it is the freedom to look out of the windows of a bus. What will come next?
I totally agree with you that it is getting so tired. When you just want to look at nature, you only see artificial colourful banners that are an eyesore. It's demeaning to be told what to do, how to do it and when to do it!
demeaning is a perfect world for this...
The huge mutated monstrosity that is the advertising is my biggest beef with capitalism. Imstead of investing money into something useful (or reducing output and working hours), it is being poured into advertising. Just to manipulate you to buy more stuff, that you don't really need.
At least they greatly reduced ad spaces in Moscow, and I think Moscow underground somehow turned into ad free zone. Weird, right? :-)
I do not think this is weird. I think Russia can do this easier, most countries are so indebted or controlled by conglomerates that they can't do much anyway.
BUT the consumer needs more protection...we are not cows.
It does my head in. I avoid products that have ads. I thought Ihad managed to cut them out my life to a fair degree and now I have a cild I am disgusted by the number that are targeted at kids who have no idea that they are not being conned. DAMN THE ADS!
SO TRUE!
Yeah but how good is the Cadbury Gorilla Ad?
"I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord
And I've been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord
Can you feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord, oh Lord"
Some ads are just funny, and worth watching. Also, the Budweiser ones :)
I would worry too much of what's to come @razvanelulmarin. People barely took their eyes off the phone to see what happens around them. While ads may appear on the screen too, there are certain ad blockers that could prevent that from happening. :)
short-term solution? Train yourself not to be bothered by marketing gimmicks.