10,9,7, Sick

Been a bit lacklustre today… not wanting to do much, and then after mowing the back garden, which is to be honest, a mission, I just vegged out. Not really me, but I just couldn’t find enthusiasm today.

So this evening, I sat down to watch the telly with the girls. Daile’s got a bad neck today, so we all ended up there, all pretty wiped out, all said and done.

In theory, that would be the end of it. We’d seen the adverts for ‘House’ several times over the course of the early evening, and it looked fairly interesting. But when it started, as with all these over advertised programs, the ad breaks took over.

At some point in the past, some advertising research must have shown that if you show the same 10 adverts to an audience all night, they do actually have some brand retention, because that’s what the networks do. They all do it here, so you get to see the same ads about 6 to 7 times an hour. If you watch for four hours, which is not that difficult if you’re in veg out kind of mood, you are exposed to the same ‘gag’ or line perhaps 25 times! 250 adverts!

I can tell you that this week I will DEFINITELY avoid spending ANY money at Kmart, KFC, ANZ bank, (well actually I can’t HELP that since we bank there, but if I COULD avoid it I would) Toyota, Holden, Listerine, some tinned chicken arseholes, Bam, Virgin Blue, St George bank, KFC, did I mention KFC? Maybe, every time we see one of these damn things we should stay away for one day. That way we could really change the way that networks view their audiences. I mean it’s not difficult to see what they think of us is it?

Now the networks spend a whole lot of money telling you to stay tuned one way or another, but mainly with ads for what’s coming up today/tomorrow/next week. They try to portray themselves as giving you the best value… the best programs and all that bullshit. Then they advertise 10 ads at you all night.

What I hear when the ads cut into a program every 5 minutes for 5 or 6 minutes is the networks screaming ‘We don’t give a flying f**k about any of you… all we care about is selling advertising to big organisations that can afford to buy it, and we don’t care whether we’re pissing some of you off because most of you are too comatose to even notice that we’re doing this”.

OK time out.

Some of you may think…‘Well Chris, that’s just how the business world works…get used to it!’ TV works because of advertising. Well it doesn't work for me!

It doesn’t work because networks, like big businesses, adopt a position where they TELL you that they are acting in your best interests, when ACTUALLY that’s the absolute last thing that they are doing.

But don’t get the idea that I’m naïve enough that I thought that they were actually doing what they said they were doing. We all know this. I’m saying something here that you all know…I know you know… you know?

But the other thing I’m saying here is that we’ve lost something. Our society lost something, and I think that this attitude that is embedded in TV networks is symptomatic of that loss. It’s not JUST TV networks though its everywhere you look. Last mothers day, the Kimberley Park State School had a thing that they have every mother’s day run up which is a little mothers day market. This is an early morning market that the kids can go to buy something for their hardworking mums for the upcoming Mothers day. It IS a nice idea and most of the kids get something there. They each have about 5 bucks to get something…and this year Phoebe bought Daile a little cup that was wrapped in cellophane… and packed with sweets. She was chuffed with the thing, and I gave her some paper to wrap it in. When the day came, both she and Matilda were BURSTING to give their Mum the gifts that they had personally chosen and wrapped.

Daile opened them both with as much drama and appreciation as she could muster, and Phoebe offered to help her unwrap, as little kids are wont to do. When she ripped off the cellophane, and poured out the sweets…. There were only the sweets that were visible, and under that was scrunched up newspaper....!

Hmm

I don’t know what you think about that. What I think about that is that we have become SO used to the idea that it’s OK for things to be sham and show - that we don’t even have any qualms about preparing gifts that our kids are going to be giving to their Mums in the same way. Phoebe felt that SHE was ripping off Daile!

Am I the only one who thinks that we should be considering ‘other’ stuff when we lie like this? Our whole society is built upon saying one thing and doing another! For example, many employers want us to feel part of a ‘family’, not because they give a shit, but because they think they’ll get more out of us. But they don’t really get that you have to actually TREAT people like family to get them to BEHAVE with that kind of loyalty. Non of us expect them to treat us like family, we’re not STUPID, but they assume it! Then before you know it we’re behaving as if we WERE stupid.

COME ON everyone! Lets get some belief in our own worth here! I’m sick of being had every time I place a mobile call! I’m completely over being treated like a 12 year old by TV and radio networks, Newspapers, Websites, Spam, Shops and direct sales people. I’ve had enough of people NOT NOTICING that they are being systematically shafted by the social system, the same system that thinks of them as consumers and human resources, rather than citizens and employees. And I don’t mean citizens and employees like politicians use the words, I mean citizens as in people who share a moral conviction and sense of responsibility for the rightness and wrongness of pro-social and anti-social behaviour respectively. I mean employees as in humans being in a mutually beneficial and just contractual relationship that has both written AND unwritten contracts that must be kept with dignity and honour by both parties with implications that reach beyond the immediate concerns of the organisation to the include stakeholders that are external to it and not financially relevant at all. I’d like to see moderation, scaling down, lowering of financial goals, more worth assigned to non profitable non ‘outcome’ related or at least non measurable outcome related activities.

I want to see kids learning that words should be matched by deeds, that honourable behaviour is worth something, that making money at any cost is NOT OK. That caring about other people and the environment that we live in is actually a good thing, and putting that above their own immediate welfare now and then might actually be better that they can conceive of right now!

Then they can go and tell the TV networks all about that.