Originally Posted by Chris L
Face it, nobody forces you to sit through advertising, it's a choice we all make. If you don't like television advertising, don't watch. If you don't like the ad-bot here, ignore it. If people shove junk mail in your letter box, throw it away. If people spam your e-mail, block them (or get a Yahoo account that filters out 95% of it). If people call you at home, get an answering machine to screen your calls, or do what I do and simply don't bother answering calls that come at intrusive times.
Advertising is like insults, it's up to us how seriously we take it, and this is the sole determinant of how intrusive it becomes.
Advertising is not something that you can just shut off or ignore, even if you chose to ignore the
message in the ad, advertising is still everywhere. In addition to being on TV and radio; in newspapers and magazines; in your mailbox and on the internet; and on your phone line; it is also on billboards on busses, trains and buildings, both public and private; on T-shirts, caps and other clothing, etc., etc.
I view advertising as a serious and growing form of pollution, and like most pollution it is harmful - in the case of advertising, to the aural, visual and the mental environment - and we as a society should be working to either significantly reduce or eliminate the amount of advertising pollution we allow ourselves and our environment to be subject to.
Our constitution does not give corporations the right to freely pollute the physical environment we live in - for example the air we breathe or the water we drink - nor does it give corportations the right to freely pollute our aural, visual and mental environment with advertisements.
Our society has up until now tolerated the steady creeping takeover of our public spaces with advertising pollution, in much the same way that it has tolerated and allowed motorists to take over our public spaces with their dirty, noisy and dangerous vehicles. These social changes have crept up on us slowly and unquestioned, but it is never too late to question either of these practices, or to change them. Just because most of us have no experience with alternatives, having grown up and lived immersed in western culture for most or all of our lives, all too familiar with the constant hegemony of both advertising and motor vehicles, we don't have to accept the status quo, much less participate in it's propogation or defense. Why can't we imagine a different, more humanistic society, without the constant barrage of advertising, and not based on corporate avarice, and work for change to make it happen?