The Believe The Tripe

Don’t Believe The Tripe!

Don’t believe the hype, the advertising tripe.

Advertising affects us all whether we admit it or not. Through television, radio, internet and print, advertising is in our faces like an unwanted relative at Christmas. It smacks us over the head until we are in a consumerist haze that forces us to spend money we don’t have, on things we don’t need to impress people we don’t like. Or worse yet, it sucks us in to just buying a bunch of crap.

Now I am not against advertising on the whole. It advises me of many new products and services. It shows me pictures of dust mites that need to be eradicated from my bed sheets however I have never seen anything the size of what they show on the advertisement. If I was in bed with a bug the size of a dinosaur I think I would know about it. If it is smaller than the eye can see then I think I can live with that and even beat it in an arm wrestle for pillow space. Advertising reminds that I will never be able to afford the new sports Mercedes but I will have the ability to launch a Space Shuttle from my IPhone. The television screams “Doors, Doors, Doors,!!!” and names of various white goods at “Never To Be Repeated Prices”. How has a door become an impulse buy at 11.30pm on a Tuesday night. The store isn’t even bloody open! And what happens if the price is repeated again? Is there a consequence? Will someone go to jail? Will the earth cease to rotate? Will your product no longer work as the price was repeated? Oh and ever noticed how the television advertisements are louder than the program you are watching?

But how are we going to get them to reduce the level of television advertisements when the advertisers can still make the most ridiculous of claims about a product. I recently went to purchase a packet of noodles and it stated in bold writing on the packet that they were “Shelf Fresh”. Just what constitutes being “Shelf Fresh”? After coming to the conclusion that an everyday run of the mill house brick could also be considered “Shelf Fresh” my desire to purchase aforementioned noodles diminished rapisly. The packet of frozen Oven Chips advised me they were “Oven Fresh”. How does that work? You heat them up in the oven as they are pre-cooked and all of a sudden they become Oven Fresh! Nothing fresh about it. My toothpaste also mentioned it has “Mint Freshness”. But when the ‘Mint’ is derived from synthetic flavouring I question its freshness.

Now in a society where we won’t even let children talk to strangers why do we feel it is a good idea to purchase products from the mentally deranged? These advertises all have named like Crazy Clarks, Crazy Johns, Crazy Clint, Ken Bruce Has Gone Completely Mad and Temporarily Insane Tim . We happily fork out our hard earned cash to these head cases.
Please stop. It only encourages them.