Original Source

A wise rap artist once said “Television, the drug of the nation. Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation. Television.” I think it was John Barnes, but that’s not important. Television offers an alternative reality that is open to the Machiavellian and the propagandist, the devious and the Littlejohn. People who twist word and image into a funky flashing feast for the eyes, and we just sit and nod and accept. A recent statistic I made up shows that even with the intervention of the Super Mis-Information Highway, nearly 97.3% of our opinion is formed either directly or indirectly from the old gogglebox. Shocking, I think you’ll agree.

The main problem is that Television is just so damn authoritative. Sure, people spend a lot of time on the internet, but in terms of providing us with information that we believe in it is only one step up from the weird guy in Halwill pub with hair that looks like Einstein’s might of if it was more unkempt. Even when reading the most grounded, serious story from the most grounded, serious website, you still get the feeling that it probably stems from the mind of some IT employee with a strange sense of humour, a penchant for lying and time to fill between episodes of Columbo and Quincy, ME.

Television has no such problems. If television says something, we listen and accept. And the really clever thing is how T.V. uses context so that we don’t need to process the information at all. It is already bagged and tagged for us as good or bad. We don’t want programmes like Question Time that promote argument and various view points. Aarrgh. We want our opinions fully formed and edible in one easy bite, preferably dressed in a sultry voice.

TVs authoritative voice is why advertising works. If we were presented with a product in the form of a written document that gave it to us straight, we wouldn’t buy a tenth of the crap we do. KFC – over-farmed mutant chicken in fat. Cheese Strings – elastic non-dairy product with synthetic everything. HSBC – money grabbing morons who couldn’t even get my address right after 8 attempts of me literally s.p.e.l.l.i.n.g. it out for them. But if instead you give your product a load of flashing lights, some music or a half-baked ‘comedy’ script acted out by a stupid little girl in a stupid little frock, then the public are a million and two times more susceptible.

However, if you occasionally take a step back and actually listen to what you are being told, you say “W’aaaaAATT? aloud.

Example

Original Source shower gel advertises itself as using 9763 individual leaves of mint in every bottle of shower gel. Wow, the viewer’s unconscious says, Sounds good. I may pur-chase some on my next trip to Tesco. But if you stop and consider this selling statement, it really isn’t that great. It suggests wastefulness and inefficient material usage that no doubt requires the kind of intensive farming methods that that programme on BBC2 told me was a bad thing. Now I’m confused. Who do I trust: naked man in a field or Adrian Childs? And that is a question few of us want to consider.

The same thing was said by PG Tips in their ad for their tea. “We only use the top two leaves in our tea”, they smugly claimed. Excellent, said the viewer’s unconscious, And here I am drinking this shite like a muppet. But what about of the rest of the tea plant on PG Tips’ land? Burned and destroyed? Who cares, as long as only the top two leaves are making it into my mug, which I guess is what I always wanted, I just didn’t know it. It is basically the European’s rape of the buffalo happening all over again. Why can’t we be more like the Native American and use the whole of the beast, be it tea tree, shampoo bush or noodle coated sheep. (And if Pot Noodle steals this idea of a sheep with a coat of noodles - which they will - I will sue them for every last dehydrated penny they’ve got).

Yet despite these decidedly dodgy claims of productual greatness, the companies can work them into tools of selling, all thanks to television’s ability to dictate directly to our minds.