"If consumerism is the bullet in our demise, then undoubtedly the media is the
weapon. Obviously the media are a very powerful tool in all this as it features
heavily in our lives in many different forms, Internet, TV, Radio, Press. It is
literally everywhere we go. Consequently a large influence on what we think, do
and mainly what we buy. What makes it even more complex is that the media at
large is not independent anymore, but controlled by large corporations, who
obviously look at their bottom-line and not the social consequences.
Facebook and a variety of other corporate controlled social media services
and search engines who in their corporate statements all pride themselves to
respect your personal privacy actually make it technically very difficult for
you to control what becomes Public knowledge or not. Case in point was the
birthday party of a teenager in the Netherlands who did not set her privacy
settings properly on Facebook and what had been planned as a small birthday
party of friends and family became a major public event attended by thousands,
turning it into a "free for all" fight between drunk teenagers, hooligans and
the local police.
Even though you might be thinking – 'just because it’s on TV or in the latest
news report it doesn’t mean I am forced to go and buy it'. Yes, in theory that
might be correct but in practice it is not. Advertising basically works like
Chinese torture "drip - drip" - a constant bombardment of images of wealth,
material possessions and body images, etc. Indeed, we are slowly being
brain-washed and our mind is changed to thinking, ‘well if everyone else has one
of those, maybe I need one too!’. That's it: the driving force of consumerism
explained in one paragraph."
Read more in SURE
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