Don’t Surrender to Advertising

Taking a break from inspirational blogs, I thought I would put my Communication majoring to use and talk about advertising and the media in general. Because there are some people that don’t realize that advertising is a very powerful part of our everyday lives—we are exposed to thousands of advertisements everyday through television, billboards, radio, magazines, internet, etc. Being a powerful part of the world, it is no surprise that it can construct a society and corrupt a mind at the same time. Advertising reflects the media and forms the way we think, it causes us to see life in a specific way. For example, when people adapted to the concept of “ Thin is in” many people believed that if you weren’t a certain size you couldn’t be in the in crowd. Advertisements, especially magazines and television pushed this idea to the point were too many people go to extreme measures to be smaller. All these ideas are false, yet because advertisements portray them as reality, people don’t see through the misconceptions and sadly easily fall for the lies of the media. But for those that do see through the lies and misconceptions of the media, they also see the realization that advertisements are selling useless products that are only valuable by name and image.

No longer is a product valued by what it can do for you, instead it is about how it looks on you. A good example of this is the Apple ipod, behind the slim exterior and logo it is just an mp3 player. Like one that can be bought at a Target for less than a hundred dollars. But it is the fact that the ipod is better established in advertisement than the others, thus people want it more. I admit that even I have been caught up in the world of supply and demand, I own an ipod, have the latest cell phone, have an Xbox 360, and try to dress as nice as possible. Even though I don’t get engrossed in having the latest fashions, I’m still a consumer just like everyone else. Personally, I have seen people choose the ipod over another mp3 player that had more GB for less just because it didn’t look appealing. The idea of quality versus quantity no longer exists; it is now quality versus vanity.

Today is the age of commercialism, advertisements are everywhere. It’s difficult to enjoy your favorite magazine when there are hundreds of ads consuming the pages. Advertising is a culture all by itself, billions of dollars go into it instead helping society it is corrupting it. From high school I have seen the lies that media sells, especially to teenagers. I knew that to the media I was just a walking dollar sign, so I had to find a way out of the misconceptions and find the truth. If I was like all the other teenagers around me I would be nothing more than a clone. I like being unique, even though the term is hard to identify in today’s society. With advertising selling the image of perfection and products that everyone must have, there really is a battle of originality. And as long as advertisement is its own culture that battle is a losing one.