If you’re one of the people living with any kind of debt, in effect you’re no longer a free citizen, you’re just a controlled powerless slave of the system. The same pretty much applies if you perpetually buy new products or believe any adverts shown to you on TV or from any media.
Think about it — you’re kept in permanent debt, and flooded with adverts all the time. Adverts alternating between “easy credit”, assorted brand-new products (that you need “easy credit” for) and “tasty” foods (and diet products to then remove the fat from eating the tasty foods in the first place). I’ve seen stupid hamsters running on treadmills like that.
And that’s not forgetting the other daily adverts on TV, insulting you by telling you to “remember to think of the funeral costs for your loved ones” when your fat, stinking, chemical-ridden, exhausted and bankrupt body is finally dragged off to be buried.
Also, don’t worry about your kids. They’re being targeted already in the adverts, with companies making sure that they don’t escape from a similar dismal, debt-ridden life either.
So much for having a life of any note. But it’s all illusion. It’s a fake reality — and it’s called consumerism.
Start off by reading this article from Wired magazine dealing with the growing global army of people who want nothing to do with consumerism at You Better Shop Around, Not. Then try Overcoming Consumerism. And for a brief, easy-to-absorb understanding of how you can actually use your power as a consumer to change things, read the short article and browse links at Ethical Consumerism.
Life gets much better once you begin to ignore those mindless pretty puppets in TV adverts, who were placed there only to manipulate you into buying rubbish you don’t actually need. Do some reading at Commercialism.
Then, if you’re interested in the idea of doing something tangible, why not get a ladder, some paint and go change the messages on those big billboards that are blocking the view alongside most of our highways now? It’s called “culture jamming” and scares the crap out of companies and ad agencies, as their nasty little adverts get altered to reflect the truth. Get off the couch and take a few lessons from Ad Busters. Also see what ideas you can use from The Billboard Liberation Front.
For a partial free read of an interesting article that looks at modern society and consumption via films such as Fight Club, read the all too brief extract of The Rebel Sell. (For a longer article on Fight Club and the obese global culture of consumption, try Salon.)
Advertising is just consumerist propaganda. Most media (TV, radio and newspapers) are there, in effect, as delivery systems for adverts, just as cigarettes are merely an effective delivery system for nicotine — if they could make you buy nicotine in syringes, they would, believe me. Dip into the galleries at Corporate Swine.
So any moron pontificating about the “art” of advertising or trying to argue the “merits” of adverts, or generally attempting to portray advertising as socially acceptable, is like Goebbels asking you to ignore the death camps and focus on the great art work on his Nazi posters instead. (Ever wonder why black areas have more alcohol and cigarette billboards than white areas?) Go browse through the many brilliant images taken from advertising to warp the makers’ original plans, at Subertize. And see the industry looking at itself, at Ad Critic.
More than $2-billion is spent each year on targeting children with advertising, warping their minds and training them to become good little robot consumers. Read this article on Children and Advertising.
So what do you do when you’re a solo voice in the wilderness? For an interesting look at some course materials and links on the problems one faces when up against a society overlaid with a monolithic, capitalist structure that seems to be run by evil super-monkeys in suits, try Strategies of Transforming a Society of Over-Consumption.
Those lovely people at Nestlé have had a long tradition of providing free milk to Third World mothers, just long enough until the mothers stop producing milk, at which point, Nestlé starts charging. Read about this and other lovely practices more in keeping with cocaine dealers than companies, at Counterfeet.
Take a look at a section on Macdonalds — that nice company that sprinkles spices containing meat on its chips — at Macdonalds.
For a reality check that might stop your future heart attack, try Mac Spotlight.
And to get a harsh glimpse at another fast-food place that is supposedly acceptable, go discover what you never knew about KFC — at Kentucky Fried Cruelty.
Then, just because vegetarianism was mentioned, and being one myself (mainly because doing the equivalent of breaking into morgues three times a day to carve off bits of dead flesh from corpses is hardly enlightened behaviour), before you give me some conditioned-slave rubbish about “liking your meat” take a look at Animal Cruelty. And it might do you some good to consider the info at Compassion over Killing. And then to offset all the lies and rubbish spread by the local meat industry, learn something at Go Veg.
Then again, perhaps you’ve been lied to so much, you’re happy drinking daily quantities of a substance that most of us are allergic to, which causes a variety of diseases including cancer, obesity, diabetes and heart attacks, and which contains pus, blood, dung and more. Go change your thinking at Not Milk. Hopefully the medical info at the above site, and this next one, will stop you from letting your kids develop a “taste” for milk, at Milk Sucks.
Staying on food, if you think you’re being clever by sticking to “diet” products, think again — there’s a direct link to rising obesity levels since the introduction of “diet” products on global markets. More importantly, one of the ingredients found in most “diet” cold drinks and a range of other products on the shelves has been proved to cause nerve damage in the brain. It also breaks down into formaldehyde in your body, and causes mammary, ovarian, uterine and brain tumors. You may know it as Nutrasweet — one of the tradenames for aspartame. Read this PDF document from a consumer rights group. Then start your journey towards health (with a lot of medical reports and studies linking diabetes, cancer, blindness and brain tumours with aspartame) at Aspartame Truth. For more info and links see Aspartame.
Finally, something perhaps completely unrelated to everything else in this week’s column. Despite the comfortable verbal masturbation of academics, politicians and those whose salaries are paid by corporations, “anarchism” as a political choice is far more than just the destruction of everything as most people mistakenly believe. Go to What is Anarchism and then, for some happy, cheerful, attitude-filled writings by people who don’t mind a messy webpage, try Anarchy for Everybody.
Until the next time, if people who want to sell you things don’t get me.
Ian Fraser is a playwright, author, comedian, conspiracy nut, old-time radio collector and self-confessed data-junkie. Winner of numerous Vita and Amstel Awards, he’s been an Internet addict and games-fanatic since around 1995, when the Internet began to make much more sense than theatre.