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I've always known advertisements were everywhere and for the most part I've always thought I could ignore it pretty easily. I ignore it so well that it lead to an embarrasing moment with a co-worker who was asking about my Nike shoes. I replied that I didn't have Nike shoes only to look down at the shoes I was wearing and seeing that familiar "swoosh". I can't help thinking there's something wrong with this situation.
Generally I try to avoid clothing that have any kind of logo or slogan on them because I hate the idea that I'm a walking billboard for some company. What's that about anyway? Not only do I have to pay for the clothes but I have to advertise their brand? Are they not in essence saying "You have to pay us for the privilege to wear our brand". Screw them.
The only time I'll wear a shirt with a logo is when someone will give me one as a gift. But even then, I will rarely wear this shirt outside the house. Such is my hate for brand logos.
Product Placement
Now comes the latest abomination of advertising. It's not enough for me to have to sit through 1/3 of a television show's airtime watching commercials, now I have to watch as characters use sponsored products on said shows. Do I really need to know what brand of mayonnaise any given character uses? I don't think I do. I have no interest in that. Do these people honestly believe I will see a character using a brand product and go out and buy it? Because I wont! If anyone out there is listening: I WILL NOT!
But it's getting worse. Now I have to watch movies where the main character uses iMacs, drinks Coke, uses Rolex watches and drives a Mercedes. It's insane and I hate every moment of it. I got used to it on those damned James Bond movies and it's steadily gotten worse.
Video Games have started adopting these tactics and I hate them for it. Luckily I only know of three that use it explicitly and one that integrated it into the gameplay. The first three should be obvious for gamers: "Madden", "The Sims", "Everquest". Luckily for me, I either hate these games or became bored of them long before they started with the nonsense. Madden is a football game. So I can kind of understand them putting ads on there, the same way they do in NFL games on tv. But there is no excuse for integrating a PizzaHut order form in the game as Everquest has. What bothers me about this kind of advertisement is that the creators usually have to go out of their way to include this crap in the games. It's so glaring and obvious that it takes you out of the experience. Oh... How I hate them!
As for the one that integrated it into gameplay so that it's not so glaring: "Oddworld: Munch's Odyssey". This game features soda machines which can be used to acquire power-ups. I still hate it on principle but at least I can ignore it.
Cowboy Advertisement
I suppose there's not much I can do about all these ads. Let's face it. We're screwed. For now I'll leave you with this thought: They're called BRANDs. They are marking you with their BRAND. Therefore they are BRANDING you. This tells me all these companies basically see us as a bunch of cows. They figure people will buy anything they tell us to buy. They think we'll go where they steer us. Are they right? I don't know. They've been right so far... But until the day that these bastards start sending ads straight into our brains, I still have a choice.
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