Sick of The Ad Barrage? It’s Going To Get Worse
By James Donahue
Something
you may have noticed about this website is that it is mostly devoid of advertising. You should not find pop-up or drop-down
advertisements on these pages because I don’t sell space to advertisers. There
is a reason for this. I have a deep ingrained dislike of the concept of attempting to persuade people to buy things they do
not need.
I am a writer and I usually have
things to say. I want visitors to enjoy surfing my site without the constant disturbance of advertising popping up on the
screen.
I remember the days when a scenic
drive down the highway was almost ruined by the clutter of large signs standing like soldiers, promoting new cars, shaving
cream and everything else you might imagine. President Lyndon Johnson's wife, "Ladybird," disliked those ugly signs as much
as the rest of us and led a campaign for a law prohibiting them. But after that, we discovered how creative the advertising
people could be.
You can't watch an athletic
event either in person or on televison without seeing the promotions for products posted along the walls and in our face.
Our television programming is broken into tiny bites now with breaks filled with back-to-back advertising. Our computer screens
are being hit with pop-up and jump-out ads that hide the material we are attempting to read until we find the carefully hidden
"x" that makes it go away. Our trains, buses, taxi-cabs and buildings are decorated with ads, many of them so carefully placed
that we don't even realize it is an ad. When we go to the threater our movies often start with an advertisement and the actors
openly use a number of products with the brand name clearly visible.
Sometimes we find ads staring at us while hiking in what we thought was wilderness. I got away from them for a
while when hiking in the high desert area of Arizona on the Navajo Reservation.
The advertisers invaded our schools when they began paying the schools to put their junk food and soft drink products
in dispensing machines. Parents and school boards have been in conflict over the pros and cons of accepting the money paid
for keeping these machines in the school halls.
Now
the last place where I thought people might be free of advertising is being invaded. It seems that hospitals, now struggling
to meet financial demands and keep costs down in accordance to the new Obamacare legislation, are starting to agree to allow
advertising in their facilities.
Imagine
patients, fighting to stay alive in the very worst of circumstances, having to stare at promotions for new cars, shoes and
soft drinks pasted on the walls around them.
When we reach the point where we think that any day might be our last, there is absolutely no interest in ever
buying a new car or anything else that we will never use. This is the point where we lose all interest in our possessions
and concentrate instead on those we love.
