Advertising

The direct effects of being bombarded daily with hundreds of advertisements are intuitively understood by most people:

• We are being pushed toward materialistic value sets that measure our worth by the amount of expensive shit we own — these value sets lower our happiness and distract us from each other & the higher values which give us real satisfaction in life.
• at a time when we need to wind back consumption to avoid environmental catastrophe, and to think seriously about global injustice and its historical & structural basis, we are being repeatedly told that the more we mindlessly consume the happier we'll be — if we are somehow still concerned by the problems of social injustice and environmental degradation, we are told consuming certain products will address these problems for us — consumption is presented as the solution to every problem we could possibly face.
• children, who are yet to develop the strong identities and critical analysis skills that enable any kind of resistance, are directly targeted — and even advertising aimed at adults negatively affects a child's perception of the world and their developing identities.
• we have a ridiculous gender binary pushed down our throats that alienates us from our full, true selves — increasing division between genders and causing immense suffering, especially for those whose gender identities openly defy the false binary.
• our true desires for greater social connection, enhanced freedom, quality leisure time, satisfying sexual relationships etc. are appealed to by the ridiculous claim that some magical product can deliver these things — this diverts attention from the political achievements that can actually satisfy our social desires: equal political power, the end of exploitation, less work, more free time etc.
• we are made to feel inadequate, compared to 'cultural ideals' that are mostly impossible and not necessarily desirable, contributing to a range of mental health problems.
• an effect of constantly being sold something is an inherent distrust of the motives of others ('they only smile so they can rob you'), and we begin to accept we should only look after ourselves just like everyone else is — adding to political cynicism and disengagement.
• we are made to feel irrelevant in our cities, and inferior in a 'culture' that we have no influence over — instead a spectacular lifestyle is presented above us, one that we can never really achieve, but must continuously chase after through an ever-escalating series of purchases.7
• it undemocratically grants the greatest and most powerful voice only to the richest entities — those that are both non-human and completely amoral in their single-minded pursuit of profit.

i hate to generalise, but advertising generally reflects the world-view of its creators — rich white men and their sometimes-gender-and-race-diverse acolytes ―

7 this phenomenon was identified in 1960's france by guy debord, a member of the situationist international, and was published widely, including in his book the society of the spectacle — although i thought his analysis was insightful i can't recommend the book because i found it impossible not to put down — lost in translation?

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consequently we end up with an overwhelming mass of image-based consumerist-propaganda that normalises and reinforces all the problematic attitudes (sexist, racist, homophobic, ableist, classist, transphobic, list goes on...) that it should be our priority to overcome.

the advertising industry costs over a trillion dollars a year globally — this isn't just a shameful waste, it's a huge community expenditure that actively damages individuals, our societies and our environment — we should be spending this money fixing the world instead of fucking it further.

but what I think is the worst effect of advertising doesn't seem to occur to as many people, and certainly doesn't get as much public criticism: advertising funds the for- profit companies that make up our mainstream media — installing for-profit media companies (representing their for-profit sponsors) as the grand arbiters of our popular culture, public discourse and political agenda.

this has enabled for-profit interests to manipulate our public consciousness and the political process of 'our democracy' for generations, having deep impacts across our society, all to the advantage of 'neo-liberal' globalised capitalism.

the effect of these manipulations over generations

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becomes invisible and self-perpetuating — for example it is in the interests of globalised capitalism that the 'economic system' appears as a completely natural and unproblematic order of things, so for generations this is how it has been repeatedly presented, and as a result most intelligent 'educated' people of the 'developed democracies' actively participate in a collective ignorance/denial of the centuries of violent imperialism and colonialism that have constructed the current 'economic system' of continuing exploitation.

our entire global 'economic system' is a deliberate and gross injustice, stripping the resources and labour from the poorest people, concentrating wealth in the hands of the depraved few — we cannot act to address this issue if we continue to allow it to be publicly suppressed.

this is just one example of the verifiable truths that are effectively deleted from our public political consciousness by the calculated actions of the 'credible' streams of the for-profit media-advertising system — other notable deletions are the ecological limits we are currently recklessly accelerating toward, threatening a devastating collapse of the first truly global civilisation.

to gain a sound collective political consciousness — to actually face reality — advertising, its media, and the false consciousness it supports, need to be abolished.