I was listening to the radio (92.5FM) while driving the other day. As everybody has to make a living at some point the commercials started. Normally I wouldn’t pay attention to them, but since I was waiting at a rather long red light (http://www.bellevuewa.gov/trafficcam/cctv004.asp) I found myself listening. Wait, it gets better :)
The first commercial was forlaser assisted liposuction. Cutting edge stuff for the narcissistic fatso. Exercise? Eating correctly? At least reading the damn labels on the ultra processed food we’re buying? Nah.. We don’t have time for this. Just aim the nice laser at me and suck the fat like there’s no tomorrow. Suck it. Now, if everybody would have the money the “laser people” are asking for, we would definitely eradicate obesity from the face of the Earth.
The second commercial was for McDonalds. It was advertising some cheap Coke that you can buy with some crap menu that they have. The commercial made some sense, I guess, if you were into this fast food shit or if you cannot afford anything else. We are, after all, in the middle of an economic crisis (do not go in the parking lot of your favorite mall if you want to keep living with this apocalyptic image).
Now, each commercial on its own made sense. They were trying to sell you something and were managing (more or less) to get the message through by using pleasant sounding people and light, joyful jingles. The really disturbing fact is that they played one right after the other.
Now what am I supposed to understand if I am listening to the radio? Is this a tactic? Are they just dumb?
After the traffic light turned green and I started accelerating on the interstate ramp I remembered the words of my math high school teacher (who was also a bit of a philosopher): “for everything in this world there are pluses and minuses so everything reaches a stable state, an equilibrium”. If you look at the commercials like that, one was the plus and one was the minus. The radio people had grouped them together like this to prevent an unstable state. Maybe they knew something. Maybe the time-space continuum would have been torn if only one commercial of these commercials was played.