I’m the US we have legalized gambling commercials now
That’s nothing compared to the pharmaceuticals being pushed constantly in ads.
It’s always so weird because it’s not like you can go to your primary doctor and say “I want X drug” right? Like, if there was a reason to give you a drug for something the doctor would have prescribed it. Also not ask you how you felt about them, just that here is X drug for your Y problem. If that doesn’t work we try Z.
Or do people actually swap doctors over and over for months until they get one who says “ok dude”?
You absolutely can, unless it’s Adderall. For some fucking reason you tell a doctor that you’ve been on Adderall for years and it works better for you than the alternatives you’ve been prescribed in the past and they treat you like a drug seeker instead of someone who’s been treating her adhd for over two decades
I don’t think I’ve ever “asked my doctor about ___” because of something I saw in a commercial.
The latter is called “doctor shopping” and it absolutely happens.
The goal of the advertisement is to have the patient be interested, not the doctor. Admittedly some doctors are not up to date on the latest obscure cutting edge treatments, so there is some possible benefit. However, most doctors are capable of performing cost benefit analyses and understanding side effects, but when a patient comes in asking for a medication, it definitely tips the scales towards the medication.
All I see on what my wife watches is gambling and medication commercials that say nothing about what the medication does but that I should ask my doctor if I need it.
Must be Canada. They’re sort of threading the legal loopholes for drug advertising
Finally. I was super annoyed every time I had to go to gamblingsite.net just to get me addicted to gambling with free money, just to trick me to going to gamblingsite.com where I had to spend real money.
Same in UK / Australia it seems.
We have an expat TV streaming option at home for the wife and holy fuck bingo ads galore on those channels.
Also, add for insurance for funeral costs? Wtf?
Somehow businesses have managed to convince people it’s normal to waste countless hours of their life listening to someone else tell them what they need to buy so they can be happy and fulfilled. We’re bombarded by it. Radio, TV, internet, social media, busses, billboards, flyers, junk mail, email spam. It’s everywhere. It completely pervades our society and lives. It’s pervasive and it’s anything but normal.
It’s a sign of a seriously sick culture, and somehow we’ve all become brainwashed and numb to its harmful effects.
You might find Edward Bernays and his impact on advertising interesting.
One of the numerous problems for America’s magnates was the consumption of the average citizen. Many only purchased what they really needed, a behaviour which moguls wanted to change. The Wall Street banker Paul Mazur summarised this in a particularly straightforward manner: ‘We must shift America from a needs to a desires culture’, he wrote in 1927 in the Harvard Business Review. ‘People must be trained to desire, to want new things even before the old have been entirely consumed.’
https://www.historytoday.com/miscellanies/original-influencer
https://www.npr.org/2005/04/22/4612464/freuds-nephew-and-the-origins-of-public-relations
With exceptions of few countries, I believe the modern society is closer to the novel Brave New World than 1984 story. People have been convinced to accept control by way of pleasure. To forget the mundane and realities of life in exchange for gratification by constant triggering of our own biochemistry that induces the feeling of pleasure. We are encouraged buy the things we don’t need to impress the people we don’t like, so that consumer spending will keep the all-mighty economy kept being fed. But if we complain that we don’t have enough left for essentials, then we are told it’s because we keep buying iPhone or avocado toast. The media will say that the economy is slowing down because of less consumer spending, but then chastise us for doing the exact same thing we are told to do: spend and spend.
Imagine a generation of people centering even their nostalgia around commercial products instead of interpersonal relationships and life experiences. Those things are replaced by products that are becoming crucial to creating it, like game consoles, commercials, printed media - just abysmal
What’s abysmal?
People are going to have nostalgia for the the things they grew up with.
The house you grew up in, your neighbourhood, the school you went to, tv shows, games, whatever.
These things don’t replace nostalgia for interpersonal relationships and life experiences, they supplement them.
I put on a Youtube channel of 80’s commercials as a pre-roll before a scheduled meeting, it was wildly popular
Muffins?
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen an advert for a muffin
Just in case it’s not obvious, they mean an English muffin, a kind of flat bread roll. In the UK that’s what they sell for breakfast at McDonald’s (sausage and egg, bacon and egg etc).
You know, this is the first time I’ve witnessed a country refer to something we call [country] [thing] as just [thing]
A sausage and egg McMuffin does not look like a muffin. It actually does look like an English muffin because that’s what it is.
Lol. Most English people don’t even know what an English Muffin is, they are less common there then they are in the US.
Most English people don’t even know what an English Muffin is
Citation needed
Cool now do gambling
Next, they will make healthy food affordable, right ? Right ???
