At what point does the omnipresent push to make us all walking wallets demean humanity?
When college students start “headvertising” by getting ads temporarily tattooed to their foreheads (guaranteed to “get you individually noticed in any crowd”)?
When movie-goers who have just paid ten bucks to see the latest Hollywood inanity must view a slew of commercials before the previews start?
When you’re in a bathroom stall at the pool hall, sitting on the toilet and staring at an ad for Yasmin birth control pills?
Or did advertising get out of control a long time ago, when product peddling became empyreal and began polluting the skies, the ultimate reminder that we are just shoppers?
I looked out my window yesterday to admire a perfect New England day with a luscious cool blue sky… An ad for Ameritrust is circling the sky above Fenway Park for the Red Sox game (which they lost, 14-5). The blimp hummed importantly as it maneuvered turns. It was there all day long.
Of course, ads on blimps are nothing new. We’re accustomed, so we never stop to think it’s disgusting. Kids like to point at them and maybe adults feel important, like they’re at event special enough to warrant a blimp.
But it made me think: Since the dawn of civilization, humans have pondered the truths of the universe while gazing at the skies… should we be forced to think about mortgages?!?
Our first morning at the beach on the Outer Banks a few weeks ago , I marveled to en that no planes flew above the shores towing ads: “At the Jersey shore, planes fly by every 5 minutes with ads!” I spoke too soon, or too early in the morning, because about an hour later, planes started flying above us towing ads for Hooters.
I wonder what would Pythagoras would think of that [insert celestial body joke here].
