I am really fed up with advertising media and their bag of tricks. They pray on insecurities, fracture attention spans, irritate, annoy and rarely amuse. How many products do we really need? As a child I don't remember such a gluttony of average products all in the name of variety. Cleaning products, personal care products, vehicles, medications, food... Do we really need all of the products? They will all do the same thing more or less. I'm tired of the insulting barrage of: are your teeth white enough? is your laundry clean enough? is your car trendy enough? are you fat enough? is your food tasty enough? are you depressed enough? is your erection floppy enough? is your armpits wet or stinky enough? are you tired enough?
Once you turn the advertising upside down like this it really changes the validity of their promises. I think the general public need to rebel against this overpowering pounding of media and demand better. Are people really the stupid sheep marketing patronizes in this way? Do we need to be lead to every thought & conclusion in the name of promoting the economy? Our landfills & recycle stations seem to show a different story.
I'm posting this rant for the simple rationale of thinking exercises. Once we fall into habits of complacency and ultimately apathy, change no longer happens. If I allow myself to think of my son as disabled, then he is. When he is driving me crazy with selective hearing, non-compliance, or just laziness, I am the one who is stressed. Once I wrap my brain around it, again, and turn the frustration on its head it goes away and I can problem solve again. Labels can be positive or judgmental. I am striving to choose positive labels to prevent the inevitable, "You are what you think" from happening. Right now my son is very interested in Les Stroud "Survivorman." Even more surprising is that he is equally interested in marketing and media psychology. I can't help but giggle that they are the same thing, just different environments!
