Garbage Sale
Danny Mahoney | Contributing Writer
Issue date: 6/25/09 Section: Op/Ed
This past weekend, I sat down to watch “Man vs. Wild” after hearing about Will Ferrell’s, sure to be legendary, appearance. Anxiously, I waited for the show to start, but was continually deterred by a plethora of advertisements, all attempting to sell me something I could not possibly need.
Within the last 50 years, America has been swept under by a flood of senseless consumerism. Doctor Norman Herr, a professor of the University of California, conducted a broad study on the effects of television on its viewers. The study, other than discovering several horrifying correlations between television viewing and violence, nutrition and depression, highlighted the mind-blowing amount of fervor commercials hold within our media and daily lives.
On average, the American child will have seen a total of 20,000 half-minute commercials and by the age of 65, the average individual will have seen a staggering total of two million commercials. Even ‘truth’ has not managed to escape the recent bombardment of advertising. TV news broadcasting, a program that was designed to inform viewers of the happenings of the world, devotes a whopping 30 percent of its available time for advertising. While funding for programs like news broadcasting must certainly come from advertising given the American economy, the amount of advertising and money utilized by the media is what must be examined with a raised eyebrow.
Our world is hardly perfect and possesses a vast amount of problems, issues that require financial devotion, zeal and dedication. Advertising, taking the form of a brief Blitzkrieg of unwanted persuasion, could solve some of the world’s largest problems with a fraction of the money it ponies up. It is not that advertising in and of itself necessitates an evil plot, but rather the incomprehensible amount of money pooled into it, that is worthy of scrutiny. The advertising money spent on newspapers, direct mail and broadcast TV alone reaches the blasphemous height of $150 billion.
The process of advertising rarely consists of bringing your attention to some new and exciting product that is more desperately needed, but is more likely to be manipulative and deceptive. Statistical firms, like Anxciom, take data on nearly every demographic imaginable and receive billions upon billions of dollars from advertisers attempting to figure out whom exactly their “target” is.
Advertising is communication with a very direct goal and a brief invasion of one’s mind and personal boundaries for the sole sake of making a profit. If one form of communication had to be vanquished from the earth, it should be that of advertising. I am not so sure I want to be alive in a world where “Man vs. Wild” is allowed to be interrupted by the likes of Mark Jacobson and his villainous car dealing ploys. America needs to put a stop to the growing black hole of advertisements so that man can strive to better himself, uninterrupted.
Within the last 50 years, America has been swept under by a flood of senseless consumerism. Doctor Norman Herr, a professor of the University of California, conducted a broad study on the effects of television on its viewers. The study, other than discovering several horrifying correlations between television viewing and violence, nutrition and depression, highlighted the mind-blowing amount of fervor commercials hold within our media and daily lives.
On average, the American child will have seen a total of 20,000 half-minute commercials and by the age of 65, the average individual will have seen a staggering total of two million commercials. Even ‘truth’ has not managed to escape the recent bombardment of advertising. TV news broadcasting, a program that was designed to inform viewers of the happenings of the world, devotes a whopping 30 percent of its available time for advertising. While funding for programs like news broadcasting must certainly come from advertising given the American economy, the amount of advertising and money utilized by the media is what must be examined with a raised eyebrow.
Our world is hardly perfect and possesses a vast amount of problems, issues that require financial devotion, zeal and dedication. Advertising, taking the form of a brief Blitzkrieg of unwanted persuasion, could solve some of the world’s largest problems with a fraction of the money it ponies up. It is not that advertising in and of itself necessitates an evil plot, but rather the incomprehensible amount of money pooled into it, that is worthy of scrutiny. The advertising money spent on newspapers, direct mail and broadcast TV alone reaches the blasphemous height of $150 billion.
The process of advertising rarely consists of bringing your attention to some new and exciting product that is more desperately needed, but is more likely to be manipulative and deceptive. Statistical firms, like Anxciom, take data on nearly every demographic imaginable and receive billions upon billions of dollars from advertisers attempting to figure out whom exactly their “target” is.
Advertising is communication with a very direct goal and a brief invasion of one’s mind and personal boundaries for the sole sake of making a profit. If one form of communication had to be vanquished from the earth, it should be that of advertising. I am not so sure I want to be alive in a world where “Man vs. Wild” is allowed to be interrupted by the likes of Mark Jacobson and his villainous car dealing ploys. America needs to put a stop to the growing black hole of advertisements so that man can strive to better himself, uninterrupted.
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