Adverts

Adverts present us with the image of a preposterous dickhead and then invite us to identify with that image, to be that image. We are cordially invited to identify with the image of some crass, self-satisfied knobhead and we do so all too willingly, needless to say. There’s a bit of an old rush to do so, we might say – a bit of an old rush indeed! We’re falling headlong over ourselves we’re in such a damn hurry. So, in an odd kind of a way, this technique actually works. Doesn’t exactly sound very plausible, does it? You would think – I’d say – that it would be rather hard to sell this as a strategy for marketing products. You’d think that perhaps but if you did you’d be wrong, so very wrong. It turns out that this is a phenomenally successful marketing ploy, a classic in fact, an all-time classic. It turns out that everyone wants to identify with the image of the total dickhead – we want to be that guy. We want to be that guy so bad that we’ll buy whatever crappy product we are offered, no questions asked. That is the secret of capitalism right there, that is the foundation stone capitalism is based on – our infinite propensity to identify with whatever dipstick we’re asked to identify with. Who’d have guessed?

 

That’s why we see untold images of crass self-satisfied generic dickheads paraded before us wherever we go. That key image – in a thousand different guises – has become utterly and completely ubiquitous. It has become the yardstick by which each and every one of us measures and finds worth in ourselves. If we can successfully approximate that image then we are automatically accepted by our peers – if we can’t then we’re screwed. You might as well give up in that case, you might as well forget about it. No one will like you, no one will ever want to be your friend, include you in their group, etc. Adverts present us with the image of a complete and utter knobhead and then suggest to us that we might want to live our life on this basis. ‘Good things will happen to you when you become this guy,’ the adverts tell us. Good things will definitely happen. Well, everyone wants to have good things happen, don’t they? That’s universal, that’s across the board. That’s what binds us together on the one hand, and sets us against each other on the other. Everywhere we go we see images of smugly grinning self-satisfied knobheads and we want what they have got. We want to be them…

 

 

 

 

 

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