rantrantrant

How 'bout these commercials these days, huh? What a bunch of garbled non-information screaming desperately for your attention!
Sometimes, I like to imagine a Day (maybe tomorrow!) in which the only advertisements we are exposed to actually enrich our lives. Not these bogus, two billion byte per second monstrosities you're assaulted by for a full third of your television experience.

Yellow teeth?!
Unruly hair?!
Not enough stuff?!
Too fat and ugly to get laid?!
Sad about that?!
Painful side-effects from anti-depressants?!
Not enough money for everything we tell you to buy?!
We have what YOU NEED!!!!!

Clothes, accessories, medications, the latest technofad (with all the newest apps), legal counsel, banks, movies, bodies, souls (for a limited time only! GET YOURS TODAY).

Step one: capture attention
Step two: convince viewer of their inherent failings as member of society
Step three: push product
Step four: illustrate what viewer's life will be upon their acquisition of said product
Step five: shot of scantly-clad, impossibly-built woman

And all this in five to ten second explosions of visual and auditory stimulation, overwhelming the senses and stunning the mind, faintly reminiscent of a seizure or stroke. Nightmares are more enjoyable. At least they make you feel something deeply instead of exercising only those parts of your brain which are most impressionable, and least intelligent.
On my Day, commercials last anywhere from thirty seconds to five minutes; each one consists of a message to the world sent by a fellow passenger on this glorious sphere careening through space and time. They always have a point but it's never to sell anything; it's more to communicate something someone feels inclined to say. These shorts are made with love and passion, crafted to tell a story, to educate, to share with humanity the happenings within one human being. Every one unique, inspired, imaginative, beautiful in its own right and each one food for thought. This way, watching television is a wholly productive activity, one which enlivens the mind, culturing it as opposed to washing it.
To tell a person what they 'need' is to imply that they don't know what's right for them, an insulting insinuation at its core. Especially so when the 'necessities' are stupid, materialistic, inhumane, illogical and diseased bandaids used to patch over our deepest wounds. It's all just things. And things should be the least of our worries.

The television is a misused medium. Let's reclaim it as another tool for the ol' utility belt.