Don’t Tell Me What To Do, Advertising

If advertising is a conversation, it is the worst conversation ever. It’s more like being shouted at by someone wearing a tinfoil hat at a bus stop than actual engaging communication. It seems to be written by grim guilt-monsters who become more powerful with every self-depreciating thought you have; and although it’s a dialogue that just would not be tolerated in the wider context of social decency, we’ve become accustomed to that raving bus stop lunatic because we hear it everyday. But it’s dangerous territory when nutters start making sense.

So I started to play a game in my head where I scream, “Don’t tell me what to do,” whenever I see a helpful suggestion about how to improve my life. The thing is, I found I was screaming a lot. You see, I cringe when people forget their Ps and Qs, so if anyone were to demand in conversation that I “lose three kilos this week,” or radically change my hair to emulate the latest catwalk trends, they’d earn themselves a powerful death glare over my passive aggressive though polite silence. But that’s exactly the kind of douchebag diatribe that we’re reading to ourselves everyday.

The amount of time I spend on the internet verges on intervention-worthy. I roll over and scroll to help wake me up and I flick through a blur of likes, hashtags and things I hate periodically throughout the day when I’d rather not work. In a way, I imagine I am the ideal consumer; disposable income—but not mature enough to be entirely sensible with it, female—so inherently obsessed with my appearance (apparently), and willing to trawl through advertising space as recreation or a mind-numbing thumb workout. Why would they not want to tap into my mind and others like it just like a coconut suck the capital juice from its soft flesh? Which, I guess is fine, except no longer are they just prompting me to recognise how good their product is as I saunter through my day looking at images of Kardashians in various states of shame and/or undress; they’re being fucking sneaky. It’s like if I ask if my arse looks fat in something, and the response is a half-shrugged smirk of confirmation which suggests I shouldn’t be wearing Daisy-Dukes when my legs look more like legs than plastic-sex-pins. Except I didn’t ask the fucking question. So I just get some dick of a page with the helpful suggestion, “Have you thought about not ingesting anything beyond hot lemon water and your own tears for a week?” or “Isn’t her hair shiny and bouncy. You know all hair should be—and have you seen the lank shit that grows out your head lately? But don’t worry, we have a cream for that,” and you sit there and go “Well they are right, my hair doesn’t look like fabulously coiffed angel pubes, maybe I should get me some of that,” and next thing you know, you’re forking out money for a tinfoil hat the crazy person says you need.

I just wonder what this passive aggressive advice must be doing to my mind in the ways I won’t realise until it’s too late and I own $6000 worth of cream and eighty cats and spend evenings crying over selfies that didn’t get enough likes. I mean, from what Freud has said about the sub-conscious it’s a dangerous and crafty devil at the best of times and I’d just rather not provoke it. The subconscious is fundamentally a mix of a beast and a toddler, screaming and demanding immediate satisfaction with everything from “Give me the food,” to “Shag all of the things,” and probably occasionally thinking about getting out of the rain or heat. It’s the uncensored animal in us that we as civilized society have worked very hard to subdue. So what’s going to happen if, without my recognition, that beast keeps getting fed tidbits of crazy lifestyle tips, manifesting them into awful expectations and obstinate outrage that can’t be quelled by sense? Well it’d probably look something like Kanye West, but that’s hardly a risk I’m willing to take.

It’s said that advertising is the poetry of capitalism, which may well be so. But unfortunately most of this common poetry seems to resemble to fecal smearings from the walls of some under-funded psychiatric institution.

“Well why not just stay off the internet?” people may ask, or “If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen”. Both of which are super legitimate points. The thing is, I love the internet, and as it’s not the kitchen and I didn’t ask for heat to be hand delivered to me like some pizza of guilt to the wily and caveman-esque side of my brain, I’d quite like it to bugger off. Which doesn’t exactly look like an option. So rather than let that crazy voice whisper to me during my relaxed and unawares interweb time, I figure I’ll make my own tinfoil hat and scream “I don’t want to,” like a manic toddler-beast at the bastards that want to sell me things like cellulite cream, cats or neuroticism and I might just be okay.

Written by Kate H. Jones.