#2: Out Of Our Minds

Marketing and advertising has come to consume the majority of our everyday lives. You can't even walk down the street without being bombarded with different brands and companies promoting their product. Whether it is a coke can on the ground, a logo on someone's t-shirt, or the giant yellow M that seems to be on every street corner in America. Companies are desperate for our attention and our dollar and they go to extreme measures to make sure they advertise in clever ways. The Cheerios you see in the background of a tv show were purposefully put there by General Mills for more money than most of us make in a year. I like how the author portrays this concept as the population being coerced and manipulated into our buying tendencies. When I read that psychologists design malls in certain ways to confuse us and keep us shopping, I was taken aback. I know that I enjoy shopping but I didn't realize that it was purposefully made to make me feel entranced and spend more than I intended. There are hundreds of advertisements that some group of marketers worked for months preparing and tweaking to make sure that they catch our eye and subconsciously draw us to their product. So as the author explained, once we get to where we buy the product, there is a sales person with a fake smile telling you what you want to hear so you'll open your wallet and buy it. This happens 24/7 all over the world and that is what keeps our economy chugging along. To make sure everything runs smoothly and that a profit is being made, the author reveals "Our movements through department stores are videotaped and analyzed so that shelves and displays can be rearranged to steer us toward an optimum volume of more expensive purchases." I realize that I have been recorded on security cameras everywhere, but that people actually studied them to determine shopping patterns was shocking to me. It is like we are lab rats under observation, being tested on which way through the maze was most beneficial for the scientist. On another note, I thought it was clever the way he asked if his words were more valid that they were bound in a book than heard from a stranger on the bus. We are obviously a very vulnerable species and the way the author ended the piece with talk of guided visualizations and hypnotists, it got me wondering what people would do if they could hypnotize the masses. Then I think of how we are basically robots in our own world, just puppets compared to the top of the pyramid billionaires. So overall I'm not sure how I feel after obsorbing the perspective of Mr. Rushkoff, but I respect the points he made and agree with his general theory of technology consuming our planet.


This is just something I had seen and thought you would appreciate.
iwastesomuchtime.com