Buy Into It – Or Not

 

Repost from 2014.  Before social media added to the erosion of self…

 

 

Image by Banksy.  Text below by Kalle Lasn, Founder of Adbusters Media Foundation.  Source:  ‘The Gruen Transfer’ book.

“Rather than child proofing the world, we need to world proof our children” *

 

“There’s anything between 1000 and 3000 marketing messages entering the average brain every day.  I believe our brains are simply not capable of absorbing that level of advertising.  One of the reasons advertising causes mental illness is because of the weight of that onslaught, the sheer number of hits to the brain.

And then, on a secondary level, many ads are psychologically abusive.  Many ads amount to emotional blackmail.  Ads point out flaws in your personality, in your body, in the way you dress, the way you live, and then once they have made you feel inadequate, they say, ‘Okay, we have the solution to your problem.  Buy this.’  If this happens consistently, it erodes your self-confidence and turns you into an anxious human being.

 

….20 years ago, the early environmental movement was talking about toxins in the air and food and water.  There was a feeling that a lot of people were getting sick because of those toxins.  We had a feeling that there is a mental environment, which also has toxins in it.  And those toxins are among the many causes of the epidemic of mental illness that we are in, with exponentially rising mood disorders, anxiety attacks and depression.  We had a feeling that the toxicity of the mental environment could be traced, among other things, to advertising.”

*Todd Sampson panelist on Gruen Transfer , statement referring to kids exposure to sexualised bill board images and mass media.