One episode of TMA that I will NEVER be able to shut up about is 170 (Recollection). The first episode that made me properly cry! Not only is it a beautiful exploration of Martin as a character, but humanity in general.
The light, innocent, childish small talk that Martin offers to the tape recorder. He tries so hard to keep it comforted, welcome in his home, looked after. It'd be wrong of course, to ignore it, even in his despair; others should always be put first.
Through tangled, rambling sentences, Martin manages to always explain away his own emotions, actions... To be visibly uncomfortable, unwelcoming, is wrong. He offers up his life, details of his existence, but talks them into offhanded mentions.
The subtle embarrassment he has for himself; a hallmark of much of English society. Everyone must be a self contained functioning person, lest they risk being 'odd', 'troubled', perhaps even 'disruptive'.
And as Martin's inhibitions fade, as his memories of everything grow dim, his instinctual desperation shows so painfully through. Desperately reaching for answers, as a child desperately holds their hand out for an absent parent.
Martin never had a safe person to reach for, someone always there for him. His father gone before he really knew who he was, his mother infinitely distainful... This abandonment mirrored by Jon's absence that floats into his mind in phases.
And even to be denied the pain, to forget what you were crying about, there's something terrible about it. Feeling the lump in your throat, the tears on your cheeks, but never really being sure why they were there, if they even are.
And the chairs. To be denied the simple comfort of a soft place to rest.
Martin's eventual return to his duties, caring for his mother, the subtle falsified joy he finds in it, and his decline into self hatred, blame. How easy it is for him to find his way back to a place of insecurity even when he has nothing to grasp onto.
And how strong he stays. How ready he is to shoulder the blame, to carry on, to be there for anyone who might need him, anything. It's all outside, and when he falls deeper into the fog his internal, pressed down emotions spill out.
All of Martin's fears come from a place of worrying he isn't enough, and this domain reduces him to a state where he is nothing; and yet, he prevails.
I’m not sure if this is permissible in other countries, but here in the US, advertisers are allowed to use any kind of malignant psychology they want in their ads so long as those ads fit within the allotted time-frame.
Back in high school, my class watched a video on how a certain Coca-Cola advertisement was made. You may have seen it, but for those who haven’t: The ad featured a cinematic montage of a crowded beach with smiling thin white people enjoying their leisure time and drinking Coca-Cola out of a common plastic bottle.
The big takeaway from this video was that the ad wasn’t actually advertising Coca-Cola. It was advertising a lifestyle. By associating Coca-Cola with a desirable lifestyle (as well as qualities associated with desirability) it plants the association of “Coca-Cola” with “happiness” in people’s subconscious minds.
This becomes clear when you consider who the ad was meant for. The target audience wasn’t the smiling thin white people that the ad featured, but instead it was people who wanted to be smiling thin white people. This was an ad for the Gen X mom of three kids who worked full-time, who relied on shelf-stable foods to keep everyone fed, and whose nervous system was chronically fried from the stress of never having adequate time for herself.
If she was at the grocery store, and saw the very same bottle of Coca-Cola featured in that ad, she’d be far more likely to pick it up than she was before watching it. If she didn’t anticipate finding relief for her stress, then she could at least drink up the idea of it.
Of course, the thing about ads is that they stop working. Eventually, people’s minds grow wise to the fact buying a certain product doesn’t actually grant them the lifestyle associated with them.
But there’s a lot of other tricks ads employ beyond this.
The reason why Geico is the first company you consider when thinking about buying car insurance is because of the calm, consistent nature of their ads and the fact they’re ubiquitous enough to be familiar. Their mascot forms a kind of parasocial rapport with the audience, so Geico already feels familiar to you by the time you’re looking to buy insurance.
Cereal brands use cartoon-character-like mascots to make their product memorable to kids who can’t read. The reason why so many cereal mascots exhibit such frenetic, possessive behavior is to teach kids to emulate that behavior to compel parents into buying them the cereal, especially if they saw that behavior rewarded in the ad (with the cereal).
You only really see ads for apps on an app-based devices for a reason.
Then there are the ads that don’t look like ads, but look like people on TikTok sharing a new secret product with their audience using the only communication format we regularly trust: word-of-mouth.
And let’s not forget the sheer magnitude of ads that exist. I can’t go outside without seeing them. I can’t watch videos online without exposing myself to ads that wants to skewer my emotions within 10 seconds.
There’s no reprieve from it unless I wall myself off from our culture entirely.
Ads are parasites to both culture and to cognition, and they must be regulated.
I always grew up taught this (alongside 'if you don't know what they're selling, you're the product') and seeing people like figuring it out for the first time in their 20s was wild to me like. how do ypu function in a world where every part of your life is being monetized by other people and not notice?
Cult behavior is obvious to everyone except those inside the cult. Many of us grew up none the wiser, by design.
The experience of the average USAmerican is this:
We aren't educated about this. This phenomena is only something that people of certain backgrounds and privileges learn about, for the purpose of participating in it. The only reason I learned it was because I went to a charter school, where the teachers were free to make up their own curriculums.
Many of us have never visited a foreign country, and if we have, it's as tourists, which in our minds means "consumer." The reason why many Americans can't participate nicely in other cultures is because we grow up learning culture is something you consume, not something you explore.
The fact we can't grow or maintain culture outside of consumerism means we base our identities around consumption. Some people's entire sense of identity is based in the media, content, products, or commercial lifestyles they consume. There are times I actually struggle to connect with people in any meaningful way because I want to know who they are beyond what they consume, but they might not even know.
There's little-to-no infrastructure in the US that provides adult recreation or leisure that doesn't involve either spending money or going to a Christian church, with the exception of public libraries, which are less walkable than the churches are. This is a country built for corporations, not people.
The US functions as an oligarchy, and has since Citizens United was passed. This bill gives corporations permission to fund our politicians' re-election campaigns, effectively putting the political agenda in their pockets.
waluigings
catchymemes
fillianore
the-magpie-archives
hog-zone
prefrontal-bastard
ALT
alyanas-little-hideout
vaporwavesimulator
wolfgirlmaddie
dogposts
anneemay
catboycrimsonrain
fresh2definitely
copywriteddad
fiendishartist2
softichill
escuerzoresucitado
alex51324