Which is why the Hulu app for iPad is bullshit. It's not an unknown paradigm, I'll grant, cable TV has been charging for the service while relentlessly plying users with commercials for many, many years. But setting aside what revenue the company actually needs to bring in to survive, it's bullshit. I was actually stunned when I learned from my friends as a child that cable channels still had commercials. What was the goddamn point in paying outright when you're still going to be assaulted every 12 minutes by snake oil salesmen? My essential view on this has not changed. As an adult (ostensibly) I paid for cable access for a while for the Syfy channel and the daily show and Dexter. The first 2 were only possible to enjoy through the magic of Tivo, with Dexter a glorious, commercial-free oasis of loveable psychopath. But I didn't even bother even setting up an antenna once I moved to Portland. The price was just too high.
Not the monetary price, of course, although I was looking to save money. I just can't tolerate commercials. I'm perfectly willing to pay american cash dollars for TV programs I find entertaining and/or stimulating. What I'm not willing to do is to subject myself to the psychological manipulations of a bunch of bastards paid to find ever more invasive and creepy ways of insuring my brand loyalty, whether I need it or not.
My heretical vision of capitalism is one where advertising is confined to the marketplace. When I need a product, I go to the marketplace that sells such a product (be it online, or an actual physical location) and there happily subject myself to a bunch of dishonest shysters eager to make sale, with the low hope that someone may have actually decided on the "build a quality product to ensure repeat customers" business model. Meta-review sites are probably actually better for this, but let's generously allow that there is a place and a time for a business to advertise at me.
I imagine this was more or less the pattern in the glorious past. It was probably not, but I feel like there is at least SOME truth to the idea that commerce used to be limited to a marketplace. Somewhere along the way, some goddamn evil genius decided that he could make MORE money by aggressively hawking his or her wares outside of the marketplace, to people who would be bound by the social conventions of politeness and decency to at least hear people out when they accost them out of the blue and try to sell them things. Note: this is still the favored technique of door-to-door salesmen, abusing social contracts to be polite to strangers in order to guilt you into selling something, anything.
This aggressive marketing would have obviously been super exciting to other merchants as well, who also decided to move their aggressive sales tactics beyond the actual marketplace. And soon, horrifyingly, before anyone knew what was going on, it became a holy tenet of capitalism that anyone who sells goods, has the right, NAY, has the divine capitalist obligation to attempt to sell you their goods by any means possible, no matter where you are or what you happen to be doing. You want a nice drive in the country? It's only reasonable to put up an ad for Coke next to your view of the Sierra mountains. And why waste all that mental energy planning your day while commuting to work when you can see a new ad with every new building? Don't you want to support your local economy? It's your patriotic duty. Having a nice dinner? Perhaps you'd like to take a moment from spending time with your family to buy some crap from the guy who just phoned you up for no reason. Would you like to research on the internet? Perhaps look at local news headlines? Why would you want to do that without also seeing 10 ads on the same page for things you never knew you needed. More than that, they've been tracking your internet habits and have tailored some exciting deals just for you? More than that, how can you you go more than 12 minutes into a television program without knowing where to buy the products they use? Rest assured, there will be periodic reminders about where to consume all the things that will make you better.
My oh-so-suble and well-considered point is that somewhere we crossed the line from "capitalism as healthy engine of production" to "capitalism as the Lord your God who will be listened to when he talks to you." and it's 10-degrees of fucked up. If you can't stay afloat as a business unless you're free to advertise at me at any time of day no matter where I am whether I want it or not, then you have a goddamn atrocious business model and deserve a speedy descent into failure. We are worth enough as humans to assert our rights for "manipulation free spaces" where we know we aren't going to be subjected to a sales pitch. Perhaps we could confine such things to some sort of marketplace, where people who are interested in purchasing a type of product could actually go to shop for one. My quality of life has dramatically improved the further I've gotten from commercials and I don't think it's just an odd quirk of your host. The free market has it's place, and it's place is NOT bombarding me with ads in every facet of my life in order to turn me into a consumer drone. I think we are worth enough as people to insist that we have the right to insist businesses can't advertise at us against our will. And I find it astonishing that we've put up with invasive advertising tactics for as long as we have. It boggles the mind.
Which brings us back to the Hulu Plus iPad app, which, is bullshit. Because not only do I get the pleasure of paying them 10 dollars a month to watch crap on my iPad that I can view online for "free", they're still going to subject me to commercial advertising, which immediately kills almost all of the enjoyment I got from the previous 12 minutes of programming. And there's the rub, "almost all" of my enjoyment. There's still enough there in some programs to sit through a commercial or two. So, of course, I'm a big goddamned hypocrite. But I endure the occasional commercial under protest, fully aware of how they're trying to manipulate me and how much dumber I am after watching one. I MAY even be such a huge hypocrite that I buy Hulu Plus for a month so I can finish watching Robotech. But it's bullshit that my only choices to watch it are varying degrees of bullshit advertising.
Look, I know my hypocrisy is large. I wrote this on an iPad which is created by a company with one of the largest consumer cults in the country right now. I know I'm trapped in the matrix, I'm just calling bullshit and looking for a way out. There have to be better worlds than these.
Location:NE 20th Ave,Portland,United States
This is the part of the movie where you're standing there on stage in front of the stunned, silent audience when all of a sudden some guy in the back (probably your father) starts to clap slowly. The inevitable build and crescendo is overwhelming, and you break down in tears before the flood of approval and gratitude.
ReplyDeleteWhich is just a terribly snarky way of saying well done.
Thanks :). One of my more coherent rants.
ReplyDeleteAs for your snark, remember how I couldn't (and still can't) stand the slow clap? And at the end of cool runnings while I was complaining bitterly about it, you and the rest of my family did the slow clap for me just to tweak me further? Good times. In retrospect that was pretty funny.