Those Persuasive Bastards

Isn't it a sick society in which we live where billions of dollars each year are spent not only trying to get people to buy things but doing so by providing readymade identities through products? Products!! Things that are so much not a necessary part of human survival, but advertisers tell us they are and we lap it up and whip out our visa cards. Not everyone acts this way mind you, but enough people that consumerism thrives and product labels are the cultural icons of America. Can any one of us imagine living without the nuisance of advertisements telling us that we can, and should, be better people and that buying a thing or using a service will enable us to do so? Or that a particular product will allow us to be perceived by others as a certain classification of person? Everyone in this country is so damn hungry and most are that way simply because they've been cultured to be. What are they hungry for? Self satisfaction? Cultural acceptance? Advertisements create false desires, situational wants based on availability. I am reminded of the studies about overeating that demonstrate how people with more food in front of them will naturally eat more than those provided with enough food to create a feeling of fullness. The overeaters lose sensitivity to how much food it takes to satisfy hunger and the entire eating experience becomes mental, focused mainly on the pleasure derived from taste and the act of consuming. It becomes a round-and-round of more, more, more and I can't get enough, much like advertisement. People end up buying more things they don't need and may not even want simply because advertisers learned enough about human desires to present their products in a desirable manner and damn, that Taco Bell Burrito on TV sure looks good even though it's 11pm and I had dinner a few hours ago.

I'm not excluding myself from consumers; I listen to my IPod, write on my Mac laptop and drive a Volkswagon, but I try not to think of who I am based on the products I use and buying things that aren't absolute necessities doesn't really appeal; I would be even more poor than I am now if I bought things simply because they were there to buy. I strongly believe that experience plays a major part in creating identity because if all of those products and material belongings got thrown in a bonfire, I would still be the same person without them.

So that's my tangent on advertising; it gets to be a touchy subject.
(You guys are lucky, I didn't even get into how we spend so much money on advertising when there are millions of people across the world starving and picking through trash in order to stay alive...maybe some other time)