Stewart: Consumer culture: So easy a caveman can do it
If taking it to the extreme is what a group of people wants, for it. I can only pray they don’t make such a decision based off a Mountain Dew commercial.
By Ross Stewart (Contact)
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008
I awaken. I open a new stick of deodorant. The top of the deodorant stick reads, “Go all in!”
I’m sorry, but the last place I look for advice is from my deodorant, especially since it is applied to underarms, the butt crack or the torso.
It saddens me that people forge their lifestyles from phrases like this one that are created by an advertisers. It is almost to the liking of taking advice from a cracked-out bum.
“You don’t need no school, all you need is some rocks and some porn. You wanna buy some porn? It’ll make you famous.”
Usually wisdom found in power words or phrases — put together by advertising teams or cracked out bums — really isn’t all that great of advice.
If it were advice that actually made sense, I probably would take it.
If the top of my deodorant read, “You won’t stink!” I would be like “Wow, that is true. Thank you, deodorant stick.”
What am I supposed to go all in on anyway? What if going all in led to my untimely death? I’d be angry, yet no one would ever know.
How sad.
I’ve grown weary watching my peers create mantras inspired by an advertisement’s catch phrase.
Yes, we all are susceptible to advertising. There are signs everywhere telling us what to wear, drink, eat, smell like, look like, taste like and feel like. I’ve seen it all.
There’s a sign for every product. I once saw a coupon for douches. I almost bought them but then remembered that I don’t have a vagina.
We don’t think to be careful not to center our lives on something that has a main goal of taking our money. If taking it to the extreme is what a group of people wants, for it. I can only pray they don’t make such a decision based off a Mountain Dew commercial.
I implore my peers to research culture, read a damn book (gasp). Don’t buy your lifestyle. Find it the way people did before our generation through learning.
Understanding your belief systems ultimately forces you to re-evaluate them.
If consumer culture created your belief system, the only thing that will be revised are the products that clutter your home.
I’m going to start taking my deodorant’s advice and go all in.
Now where’s that cracked out bum? Poppa needs some porn.
Stewart is a Wichita junior in journalism.
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