Is it just me or has advertising/marketing risen to a new level of annoyance? Think about it, everywhere you look there are advertisements brainwashing you. Read my funny story and tell me if your life differs.
On the way to work in the morning you drive down the road listening to more commercials than music on your radio being inundated with Billboard advertisements. Quite frankly there is hardly a billboard that catches your eye beyond the "Eat Mor Chiken" presented by Chik-Fil-A, which is more of a comic relief than any overwhelming desire for you to pull off and order a #1 with a lemonade.
As you arrive to your place of work and make your trek to your office or cubicle, you have to pass through the "Cubicle Flea Market" where every person who has a child or desire of making a quick buck is hawking candy, dolls, sporting tickets, car wash tickets, raffles, and the ever popular Christmas Boutique items that come out in mid July because if you don't order then, you run the risk of your $27 box of 4 Holiday Chocolates not arriving in time for Christmas so the front desk receptionist can eat them and claim she hasn't see that delivery.
Safely you make it to your desk. All it cost you this time was $63 in a commemorative, special edition tin of popcorn that never makes it anyway. You proceed to open your e-mail and see that today there are only 492 new messages today instead of the 1348 you got yesterday. Of those, 90% are e-mails trying to sell you Viagra, a college degree, and a free membership to a porn site.
After 3 hours of deleting e-mails you realize you need some coffee to keep from falling asleep so you manage to take the back way around the "Cubicle Flea Market", avoiding any more insane purchases, and make it safely to the break room. As you fill your $32 flea market cup with a somewhat mediocre coffee, your eye is caught by the company billboard with literally hundreds of flyers selling everything from cruises, to a coupon book for the "Cubicle Flea Market". About that time, "Bob" comes in the door and decides to tell you about this new investment he has just made. "It's a sure thing!" he claims as you feel your check book squirm. "You see, I sign you up and keep $4,000 of your $5,000 investment, and through that, I go up the ladder and you get screwed! It's easy money." So, you grab your stomach and hunch over convincing Bob that the $3 breakfast burrito you bought on the way in because you saw a billboard advertising it, must be making you sick.
So you head off to the bathroom and grab one of your favorite magazines, taking a sigh of relief thinking at least in here no one can try to sell you anything. You begin to thumb through the pages of your mag realizing that it has been scaled down to 2 articles because the rest of the 275 page magazine is nothing but advertisements for expensive scotch, computer equipment that could run NASA, and golf resorts. So you finish your business on the throne and manage to get back to your desk to accomplish a few minutes worth of real work.
You click on the Internet to do some research for a project you are working on and a small window pops-up trying to get you to apply for a credit card, which is odd because you are researching the effects of Solar Rays on dolphin skin. So you decide to click the "X" button to close the window, but when you do 6 more pop-ups with everything from online gambling to celebrity porn overtake your screen. You can even see pop-ups within pop-ups. You realize this has gotten out of control because you have already had to fill out 11 different online surveys just to get to the information you needed thus far. So you decide instead of running the risk of a coronary, you'll go out for lunch.
You decide not to turn on the radio because you need a break from all of this insanity. Somehow you have managed to shield your eyes from the plethora of billboards, and cars bearing the infamous side-door magnet selling the waterless carwash, and arrive at your favorite restaurant for a time of sanction. As you walk in the door sirens go off and all 16 teenagers that work there surround you and serenade you with the credo of their restaurant. Finally you realize that you have won something, a T-shirt! Hey that's not so bad. Something nice to wear on the weekend until you unfold it and notice that on the back there is a statement that goes something like the following, "All you can eat at 'John Doe's' for $6.99!" You manage to get a table and down some sustenance before heading back to work.
As you drive back to your place of employment, you stop for a red light. Before your vehicle has come to a complete stop a man approaches you with a bucket and a picture of a starving child in some far and distant land. He then proceeds to beg and plea for your support for the little girl in the picture. So you give a few bucks to buy some solace from him tomorrow. You make it back to work and finish your duties for the day. You get in your car and make the drive back home.
After being stuck in traffic for 2 hours and have your mind brainwashed by countless amounts of radio commercials until you finally make it to your drive way. You reach out and grab 18lbs of junk mail from your mailbox and then go inside where you find 9 boxes of new cookware your wife bought because she gave "the nice man at the door a glass of water". You decide that you need a break from the insanity of life, so you and the wife go to the movies.
After having to take out a second mortgage to finance movie tickets and a bucket of popcorn, you make it to your seat. *sigh* "Finally a chance to relax" you think to yourself. The lights dim and music queues up and you see Will Rogers on the screen! He was after all a childhood hero of yours. Well apparently he needs money too. So you shoot a few quarters to the 15 year old usher who's going to take the money to get his nose pierced because he hates his parents. But what do you care, you just want to see the movie. Up pops on the screen a commercial for a new set of golf clubs. Will this madness ever end? After the golf clubs a talking Coke begins to sing the most annoying song you have ever heard, but you realize you are now parched after eating the pop-corn and watching 45 minutes of advertisements, so you head back to the concession line, and stand there for half of the movie because the 16 year blond can't figure out what "no ice" means. After selling one of your kidneys to be able to pay for the beverage you go back and finish the last half of the movie with your wife.
You arrive back home safely, and decide to watch some TV. So you flip it on and watch your favorite sitcom that has now been scaled down to be a total of 4 minutes long to make room for all of the commercials. Just after one of those 20 minute long Bowflex commercials end, one comes on regarding feminine hygiene. About 5 second into it, a Direc TV Interactive pop-up comes up and you can get a free coupon for the product you are watching. You think to yourself that you pay good money for premium channels like HBO and Starz! so you don't have to have interrupted viewing time, so you flip over to find out that HBO has started to move towards the dark side, by slipping a commercial in here and there between movies. Just before you break down and go postal on the TV. your phone rings. "Thank God" you think to yourself. It's 9:45pm so it must be a distant relative or friend calling you to say hello.
So you pick up to hear 2 seconds of dead silence. "Hello? Hello!? Hellllloooo?!?!" Just before you hang up, someone comes on and says, "Are you happy with your long distance service?" After you reveal to the mentally challenged person on the other end that you are already using their service, you hang up and decide to call it a night. You lay in bed for several hours unable to go to sleep because you are worried about what you will have to sell at your desk at work tomorrow to offset the second mortgage you took out to go to the movies. You turn the TV on and see Don Lupree who has made millions of dollars convincing people to buy his program that teaches people to convince others to buy this program and so forth. But tonight there is a special deal because he is not selling it for the regular price of $400, but for 20 easy payments of $20. You finally fall asleep knowing that in this psychosis we call life, it will all repeat tomorrow.
Understand that this story was written in a humorous light, however I believe advertising/marketing has become a cancer that eats away at our society. Do yourself a favor, don't purchase anything you see advertised to help stop this madness. If we don't stop it soon, what will be next? Cell phones? Newborns having a sticker slapped on their butts? This is out of control. Just my $.02.
Posted for, but written by Matt. Thanks for the laughs.
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