Saturday 14 September 2013

The Problem With Adverts.

Everybody wants to be a better person.

Not everybody realises just how harmful the effects of advertising can be though. The fact is the advertising companies (for the most part) are against you. They are taking advantage of every scrap of psychology they know because they want you to buy something. Even the Oxfam adverts are selling something, the only difference is that they LOOK like the good guys. Personally I don't trust them.

Every time you watch an advert, there are hundreds of little tricks in there to make you insecure, to make you believe that you need something. To make you angry, or sad, or excited and to connect these emotions to their products or to connect the solutions to their products. Remember that trope of a sleazy salesman who is good at their job, but you wouldn't trust as far as you can slide them across the ground on a trail of their own slime? That's advertisers!

All they want to achieve, is to make you need them.

They do this at great cost to the viewer and advertisements are a source of a great deal of psychological disorders (the obvious example being body dismorphia).

I watch a lot of youtube. Youtube used to be a great place. No adverts, can watch anything you like (almost) and it was a place where I felt like I could escape commercialism. Not anymore however. There are some youtubers that I watch such as Nerd3 who make their living from their youtube videos. This is of course funded by advertisements and he says [paraphrase] 'It's a 30 second advert for the sake of a 30 minute video'. Of course this is better than TV or radio or spotify but I just don't want to see them at all. I remember when advertising on youtube first started. The advertising companies were small fries, they felt less like the bad guys and more forward thinking. Now however, every single advert seems to come from Footlocker or HMV or some record label or yaddah yaddah yaddah. It seems like the price of these adverts has skyrocketed and it has shut out the small businesses once again.

There are some youtube channels that I watch exclusively to learn something, or to grow, or to think about things in different ways. Do you know what stands in between me and enlightenment? Youtube adverts! Well... and a few other things. But it is Youtube adverts that irk me the most.

I understand one thing though. I understand that capitalism is driven by advertising. It is driven and accelerated and has been very effectively. For better or for worse (for worse) we live in a capitalist society and advertising is a simple symptom of a larger disease. I don't have any suggestions where we can go - although the sort of oligarchy discussed in Plato's Republic has always appealed to my naive political sentiments - all I know is that this is not the last stop. We have been here for a long time but we are just waiting for the drivers to finish their coffee and scone.

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By having read this article, you agree
that I am not responsible for any
distress, discomfort, enragement or
offence caused by your reading
of this article. DFTBA.
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Saturday 7 September 2013

What's a father?

What does it take to be a good father?

I'm young. Maybe you can forgive me for being idealistic. A good father teaches you what he knows. He guides you through troubles without being heavy handed and he looks to help you become who you want to and need to be.

For years now I've had this in the back of my mind with much of what I do. If I am a good person and I raise my kids well (assuming I have kids) then those kids will take the values I have learnt and keep them going in their lives and ideally will pass on modified and improved versions of those values when they have kids.

In this way, I can achieve that coveted human goal, immortality. Or at least... I can survive in some positive way. Through my children and their children. If you think about it, much of who you are is because of your parents, your grandparents, your great grandparents and even further back to people you have never even met, but who have taught those who taught you.

It is my opinion that the two primary goals of everybody's life should be:
  • Learn as much as you can about this world.
  • Learn how to tell your kids what you have learnt.
 You always hear bits of advice passed down from your grandparents and parents. Little snippets of wisdom or clichés which may sound trite at first. You may dismiss them but the purpose of them is and always has been to attempt to teach your children what you have learnt. These proverbs are always quick and always memorable and most usually, they are very useful.

This is a call out to take a second look at those things your gran is always saying to you. To take a second look and to reassess its usefulness. To analyse the layers of meaning which exist within each phrase and hopefully, to learn some tricks for yourself.

I'll see you on the other side.

*******************************
By having read this article, you agree
that I am not responsible for any
distress, discomfort, enragement or
offence caused by your reading
of this article. DFTBA.
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