Nov 4, 2022
Advertised to Death in America: a Medium Short
Seriously, we’re fucking commercialized and monetized in every way, from every angle, dry-screwing us until we buy their lubricant!
A long time ago, the media, Television and Radio were all transmitted via “public airways” freely distributed to the public. They started adding “commercials” soon after.
People got used to commercials interrupting TV and Radio.
Over time, private interests convinced the government and the public to create “cable TV” that eventually replaced the ‘free’ public television. That set the stage for paid, commercial free TV programming.
People got used to cable TV costing us a lot of money every month.
Over time, commercials started taking a larger and more frequent footprint on those cable networks and services.
Enter YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc. When those first started they were free and commercial free. But that didn’t last. Soon we were inundated with commercials and ads everywhere.
We got used to those. Then came streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, AmazonPrime, HBOmax, etc. We were paying to avoid commercials once again.
Now, we have commercials in almost every part of our lives; streaming services have gutted their basic services and provide more expensive plans to reduce ads for the privileged.
YouTube also has ad-free premium memberships. AmazonPrime now has rentals rather than new content at no charge. The incremental fucking we are forced to endure is endless and every orifice is covered by an ad.
What’s next? Well, you can bet that we’ll be forced to pay higher and higher amounts to be ad-free. It’s very much like an episode of Black Mirror where we are forced to endure 24 hours a day ad-streaming in our home preventing us from sleep or peace unless we pay a fee to turn it off for a few minutes.
What should actually happen is that we the people get paid for ads and commercials. When we get junk mail we should get paid. When people solicit our homes or send us political flyers — we should get paid.
We need to demand to be paid for ads or else. The time for half measures and gentle advocacy is long over.
