Growing up in the USA (but I imagine it's increasingly true for all countries these days) advertisements are a constant in everyday life.
Ads like this are running several times per hour on the television.
They usually fit certain themes:
Happy driving...
"Dangerous" or exciting driving...
Interesting spots to drive...
Off-road driving
And my favorite,
"Don't do this at home" driving.
Cars are supposed to look cool and become ingrained in your brain on a daily basis.
Look, this Nissan truck shakes the earth without moving. So cool..
But there's just one problem with the advertiser's plan.
I hate ads...
Not dislike, or like slightly, or even like them a bit on a really good Wednesday after I have 3 meetings at work. (More on that later.)
By the time I was 19 and left for college I was so sick of watching car ads in particular that I swore off all forms of traditional media sources and went straight to the internet for my media consumption.
It was hard at first. The internet was just beginning to take off in the early 2000s and not much was available. The Daily Show on Comedy Central was an early favorite. (Still miss you, John Stewart. Thankfully, we have the guy on the left now.)
And Frontline on PBS provided many hours of interesting documentaries.
It wasn't until 2007 that an upstart media by mail company started a streaming service which would change my life.
Enter Netflix
For less than ten dollars a month I could watch thousands of titles at no additional charge and more importantly no ads.
Heaven...
Fast forward until today and we have so many more choices now that it is laughable that most people remain subscribers of the traditional media sources. (I know, I know, sports is a big reason of course.)
Now I watch entire programs uninterrupted (binge watch, why can't I stop...) without the endless monotony of cars on the screen which I have no interest in.
Life is indeed much better than in the past. Now if we could only fix that whole world hunger thing...
How about you Life readers? What ads drive you crazy? Do you still watch sources of media which contain ads? Let us know in the comment section.
Thanks for reading!
(CH)
I'll leave you with an image of the true meaning of Christmas by the way.
SMH...
