It's always so weird because it's not like you can go to your primary doctor and say "I want X drug" right? Like, if there was a reason to give you a drug for something the doctor would have prescribed it. Also not ask you how you felt about them, just that here is X drug for your Y problem. If that doesn't work we try Z.
Or do people actually swap doctors over and over for months until they get one who says "ok dude"?
All I see on what my wife watches is gambling and medication commercials that say nothing about what the medication does but that I should ask my doctor if I need it.
Finally. I was super annoyed every time I had to go to gamblingsite.net just to get me addicted to gambling with free money, just to trick me to going to gamblingsite.com where I had to spend real money.
Somehow businesses have managed to convince people it’s normal to waste countless hours of their life listening to someone else tell them what they need to buy so they can be happy and fulfilled. We’re bombarded by it. Radio, TV, internet, social media, busses, billboards, flyers, junk mail, email spam. It’s everywhere. It completely pervades our society and lives. It’s pervasive and it’s anything but normal.
It’s a sign of a seriously sick culture, and somehow we’ve all become brainwashed and numb to its harmful effects.
You might find Edward Bernays and his impact on advertising interesting.
One of the numerous problems for America’s magnates was the consumption of the average citizen. Many only purchased what they really needed, a behaviour which moguls wanted to change. The Wall Street banker Paul Mazur summarised this in a particularly straightforward manner: ‘We must shift America from a needs to a desires culture’, he wrote in 1927 in the Harvard Business Review. ‘People must be trained to desire, to want new things even before the old have been entirely consumed.’
Economy goes brrr. He needs a special circle of hell. And perhaps if not him it would have been someone else, but he was the one who brought upon consumerism, planned obsolescence, and the whole "keeping up with the Jones".
With exceptions of few countries, I believe the modern society is closer to the novel Brave New World than 1984 story. People have been convinced to accept control by way of pleasure. To forget the mundane and realities of life in exchange for gratification by constant triggering of our own biochemistry that induces the feeling of pleasure. We are encouraged buy the things we don't need to impress the people we don't like, so that consumer spending will keep the all-mighty economy kept being fed. But if we complain that we don't have enough left for essentials, then we are told it's because we keep buying iPhone or avocado toast. The media will say that the economy is slowing down because of less consumer spending, but then chastise us for doing the exact same thing we are told to do: spend and spend.
Imagine a generation of people centering even their nostalgia around commercial products instead of interpersonal relationships and life experiences. Those things are replaced by products that are becoming crucial to creating it, like game consoles, commercials, printed media - just abysmal
People are going to have nostalgia for the the things they grew up with.
The house you grew up in, your neighbourhood, the school you went to, tv shows, games, whatever.
These things don’t replace nostalgia for interpersonal relationships and life experiences, they supplement them.
So recently our local government relaxed the rules on sports betting / advertising. It's now everywhere. When you go to see our local MLB team the stadium is coated in bright LEDs advertising bet dot com.
Now gambling firms have ads that tell you not to use them.
I’m wouldn’t mind if it was “you have increased your limit once today, you can’t do that for 48 hours now” then 60, then 120, or something. But no, it’s just “set limits”, that you can change whenever you want…
Just in case it's not obvious, they mean an English muffin, a kind of flat bread roll. In the UK that's what they sell for breakfast at McDonald's (sausage and egg, bacon and egg etc).
Oooh right of course. I've not had a maccies breakfast in a while and kinda forgot. Most breakfast places I've ever been to just sell "baps", "rolls" or "butties" even if they end up serving it on a muffin roll
Yeah I thought so too. You don’t have to buy your kid anything they ask for, it’s your job as a parent to set boundaries.
Unless they’re trying to make the parents think of burgers less often, so they’re less likely to buy crap for their kids.
Either way, it seems like the government is doing your parenting for you.