In my Critical Thinking class, we recently watched a documentary called “The Persuaders.” This documentary looked deep into the grasp of ads on our lives. There were so many interesting points made in the documentary that I had never before even considered. One of these such lines was, “When a culture becomes entirely advertisement friendly, then it lacks being a culture at all.” What a powerful statement. This is something I had never thought of, but upon hearing this statement, I have found it does make sense. Our world is so swarmed by ads, that we tend to lose sight of what is really there, and in some cases, it goes to the point where all we can see is advertisements. With these ads constantly encircling us, we want what is new, what is fresh. We want what everyone else has, or we seek originality. This constant searching through a swamp of advertising can make us lose what is really important, or what we used to hold true. We now live in a world in which we are constantly targeted by ads, and it has become hard to run away from them. We are becoming more and more advertisement friendly, and with people and screens and billboards always telling us what we should do or where we should go or what we should buy, we can lose ourselves, and our culture with us.
I am a constant user of Spotify, but my cheap self does not have Spotify Premium. The defaults of not having Spotify Premium are not being able to pick the song you listen to, not having your music downloaded, and of course, advertisements. Most of these ads are for Spotify Premium, and these ads are so annoying. Sometimes, I have to leave the room when these ads come on. At first, I just thought that Spotify was just bad at advertising, and that the ads were really annoying. Then my music would turn back on, and I wouldn’t think much else of it. After we began analyzing ads, I realized the genius of these insanely annoying ads. People are so much more likely to pay to get rid of ads when the ads are so bad that can’t even be listened to. These ads are bad on purpose so that people will pay for Spotify Premium, and get rid of them. When people hear “no ad interruptions” at the end of a painful ad, it doesn’t even matter what else was said about Spotif...
I never really thought about the documentary that way. I understood that there were ads and that they were a significant part of our everyday lives, but I thought that it was a stretch to say that with so many ads there is a lack of culture. I haven't really realized that so much of what we depend on and how others see us is based a lot off of ads. On the other hand, do you think that ads can be helpful? Some may not want to make us buy the products but they can remind us of family, friendship, and community as well.
ReplyDelete