I Don't Want Any
Publicity. You just can't get away from it. Some call it inevitable, a result of our modern living. That without it, our economic system would collapse. Heck, it might even get boring. I remember reading a book by the wife of an American student based on a diary she kept while her husband was doing research at Moscow University in the 1970's. She described how empty of light and color the city was. There was no publicity. No billboards, no colored lights. Granted, one of the attractions of New York City is Times Square with all its lights and advertisements that cover what would probably be prosaic buildings in a prosaic square. Still, that doesn't mean we like to be told to try Mentos or shop at H&M in our every waking minute, no matter where we are.
A case in point. I have a Facebook account. Along the side are groups and posts the gods of Facebook suggest I might be interested in. I ignore them. From time to time, they slip onto my wall "suggested posts." When that happens, I go to the trouble of eliminating them. "It is not relevant to me" is what I continuously tick. After a couple of days, they get the message, and the gods of Facebook stop slipping them in between posts of friends and pages I do want to follow. I also have an Instagram account. When I first started it, it was clean. Now, whenever I look at it, I will find advertising as well. I delete every single one.
No, I don't want to see this cat video. No, I don't want to buy Sunny Delight. No, I don't want to buy Maybelline cosmetics. No, I don't want to check out the hot new fashion at this web page, that looks like it's from South Korea and sells children's clothes disguised as women's sizes. No, I don't want to see a video from Abanca, a bank that covers its wolfishness with trappings of pretended interest in our traditions. Please get that page for correcting grammar out of my face, I have a book. I'm not interested in the psychology of a break up, either. So there are cars with bad ratings. I don't care. Mine is almost twenty years old, probably has no ratings, yet it still runs. Shocking photos? I can take some pretty good shockers myself at four in the morning wherever young people congregate. Not interested. So there are flip flops with animal prints. At twenty euros a pair I'll go barefoot. A restaurant? In Bilbao? Are you serious? You can tell my geographical location is turned off.
And that's only on social media. Television has become one long commercial interrupted by programs and movies. There might be an interesting movie one strange night. After fifteen minutes, a commercial break. You get up and go get something to drink. You come back. You wait for the jingles and the crooning voices to finish. You wait some more. Ten minutes after the commercials came on, you try to remember what you were watching. You remember it was an interesting movie, but you're not sure which one. After twenty minutes, it comes back. You don't remember the argument up till now. You're lost. You decide to turn off the television and watch it on DVD when you get a chance. Without commercial anemia breaks.
Publicity isn't sent much by mail anymore. I remember back in Boston throwing out half the letters the mailman left because they were all advertising. It's become too expensive. It's much cheaper to go onto internet now. Still, sometimes local companies send out some mailers within the township. Remove from mailbox, introduce into trash can. It's in cities where buildings get flyers, delivered by hand by enslaved minions working for less than minimum wage to cover large swathes of a city, leaving flyers in mailboxes, or a specific box with "Publicidad" written on it. Sometimes they leave flyers under the windshield wipers of parked cars. I have gotten in my car, started to drive, and discovered flapping paper waving at me from the passenger side of the windshield. I step on the gas, and let it fly off, or just flap itself to tattered oblivion. It's not the first time thieves have put flyers under wipers far from the driver's side, to distract the driver and steal the car or a purse or bag in the interim. Publicity as a double edged sword.
As we connect more and more appliances in our homes to internet, and use "smart" objects, we also become sitting ducks for the adman. The only "smart" appliance I have is my phone, and the computers that connect to internet. Other than that, it's all analogical antiquities. Our television isn't that old, but it's that cheap. Today I noticed an article on The New York Times. The Roomba, a robot that cleans the floors for you, maps out your house as it goes, to avoid crashing into the table holding that glass vase you have treasured since childhood. It seems there might be plans to sell that data it collects to Google, Apple, or Amazon. The implications of this are staggering, from simply offering you advertising depending on what you have or don't have, to having the privacy of your home disappear, and total strangers know everything about you. They will know how many in the family, children, pets, furniture, income, repairs, movements, visitors, everything. If the future lies in "smart" homes, give me a stupid shack.
It's not easy living in the modern age. Especially when everyone is telling you to look at them, and you don't care about what they're trying to tell you. Maybe the grey drabness of Moscow in the Soviet era wasn't so bad, after all.
A case in point. I have a Facebook account. Along the side are groups and posts the gods of Facebook suggest I might be interested in. I ignore them. From time to time, they slip onto my wall "suggested posts." When that happens, I go to the trouble of eliminating them. "It is not relevant to me" is what I continuously tick. After a couple of days, they get the message, and the gods of Facebook stop slipping them in between posts of friends and pages I do want to follow. I also have an Instagram account. When I first started it, it was clean. Now, whenever I look at it, I will find advertising as well. I delete every single one.
No, I don't want to see this cat video. No, I don't want to buy Sunny Delight. No, I don't want to buy Maybelline cosmetics. No, I don't want to check out the hot new fashion at this web page, that looks like it's from South Korea and sells children's clothes disguised as women's sizes. No, I don't want to see a video from Abanca, a bank that covers its wolfishness with trappings of pretended interest in our traditions. Please get that page for correcting grammar out of my face, I have a book. I'm not interested in the psychology of a break up, either. So there are cars with bad ratings. I don't care. Mine is almost twenty years old, probably has no ratings, yet it still runs. Shocking photos? I can take some pretty good shockers myself at four in the morning wherever young people congregate. Not interested. So there are flip flops with animal prints. At twenty euros a pair I'll go barefoot. A restaurant? In Bilbao? Are you serious? You can tell my geographical location is turned off.
And that's only on social media. Television has become one long commercial interrupted by programs and movies. There might be an interesting movie one strange night. After fifteen minutes, a commercial break. You get up and go get something to drink. You come back. You wait for the jingles and the crooning voices to finish. You wait some more. Ten minutes after the commercials came on, you try to remember what you were watching. You remember it was an interesting movie, but you're not sure which one. After twenty minutes, it comes back. You don't remember the argument up till now. You're lost. You decide to turn off the television and watch it on DVD when you get a chance. Without commercial anemia breaks.
Publicity isn't sent much by mail anymore. I remember back in Boston throwing out half the letters the mailman left because they were all advertising. It's become too expensive. It's much cheaper to go onto internet now. Still, sometimes local companies send out some mailers within the township. Remove from mailbox, introduce into trash can. It's in cities where buildings get flyers, delivered by hand by enslaved minions working for less than minimum wage to cover large swathes of a city, leaving flyers in mailboxes, or a specific box with "Publicidad" written on it. Sometimes they leave flyers under the windshield wipers of parked cars. I have gotten in my car, started to drive, and discovered flapping paper waving at me from the passenger side of the windshield. I step on the gas, and let it fly off, or just flap itself to tattered oblivion. It's not the first time thieves have put flyers under wipers far from the driver's side, to distract the driver and steal the car or a purse or bag in the interim. Publicity as a double edged sword.
As we connect more and more appliances in our homes to internet, and use "smart" objects, we also become sitting ducks for the adman. The only "smart" appliance I have is my phone, and the computers that connect to internet. Other than that, it's all analogical antiquities. Our television isn't that old, but it's that cheap. Today I noticed an article on The New York Times. The Roomba, a robot that cleans the floors for you, maps out your house as it goes, to avoid crashing into the table holding that glass vase you have treasured since childhood. It seems there might be plans to sell that data it collects to Google, Apple, or Amazon. The implications of this are staggering, from simply offering you advertising depending on what you have or don't have, to having the privacy of your home disappear, and total strangers know everything about you. They will know how many in the family, children, pets, furniture, income, repairs, movements, visitors, everything. If the future lies in "smart" homes, give me a stupid shack.
It's not easy living in the modern age. Especially when everyone is telling you to look at them, and you don't care about what they're trying to tell you. Maybe the grey drabness of Moscow in the Soviet era wasn't so bad, after all.
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