Operators Are Standing By

I am sick and tired of advertising.

The average american is exposed to around 3,000 individual marketing impressions each day. Of course this depends on how you define impressions, along with many other factors. But the conventional "wisdom" in advertising bears this out. Look around you right now; personally, I'm typing on my Gateway keyboard, looking at my Dell monitor, next to my Scotch tape dispenser, drinking from my Thermos mug, making Post-It notes with my Bic pen... It's everywhere. Makes me think of the line in the Terminator movie:

"Listen. And understand. That [advertising] is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead."

Logos, signs, commercials, pop-ups, t-shirts, billboards, blimps, matchbooks, newspapers, junk mail, video games, PBS, hats, maps, buses, flyers, movies, milk cartons, tattoos, and spam...to name a few. It will never stop, because it can't. A free market system must be free to market. If america is an organism then advertising is the synapses firing the heart pumping commerce to all the nooks and crannies. Hell, it's the whole nervous system. Everything we feel-taste-want-need-fear is marketed. Our whole culture is reflected in, and simultaneously driven by, advertising. We reek of it.

For the record, I work in advertising.