Showing posts with label consumer shopping orgy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label consumer shopping orgy. Show all posts

Friday 29 November 2013

Consumer Programming ™









It's hard not to feel deep sympathy for people so unhappy that consumerism is their only relief from the pain of living. 

Thanksgiving at Walmart?

It's like they're programmed.

Sunday 2 September 2012

Banksy On Advertising


“People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.

You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like, wherever they like with total impunity.

Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.

You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.”


For further Banksy posts click the banksy tag below



Thursday 24 November 2011

All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace




Earlier, Mark pointed me to the ever interesting Adam Curtis' blog who reminds us that the Greeks have a lot more street-savvy awareness of elite rip-off techniques including rapid power swaps that we most memorably experienced when blue blood Alec Douglas Home needed to dump his title to run the UK after the Suez crisis. 

Or as The New Statesman puts it:

We British look complacently on the installation of Mario Monti and Lucas Papademos as unelected leaders of Italy and Greece respectively. Couldn't happen here, we say. But in 1963, when Harold Macmillan resigned, our unelected Queen, advised by mostly unelected Tory elders, sent for the unelected 14th Earl of Home and made him prime minister. He subsequently renounced his title, changed his name back to Douglas-Home and won a by-election in a safe Tory seat conveniently vacated for him. All that was stitched up in weeks.

I like Adam Curtis but I've not followed his latest work. He's not sussed out why 9/11 happened which makes me squirm a bit. Nevertheless I started to watch the first episode of Machines of loving Grace, and I remembered that he has a brilliant BBC film library at his disposal and a good enough brain to adumbrate a point of view that while not flawless is able to provoke new thoughts in my own. He also digs up bits of history I wasn't aware of. I knew of Alan Greenspan's Randian worship and I'm familiar with her work, but I didn't know he was part of her swivel eyed private circle. The lens on this period in New York was fascinating though once again we're reminded that the people who really took over the US after the first coup d'etat of Kennedy's death were all subsequently installed during the Ford presidency.

I put it to you that the people (string pullers/banksters) really in power used the Nixon downfall to set up a clique of players including Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle and Greenspan to set up the game for later down the road. They cut their teeth during the tail end of a volatile period and then returned with a neoconservative agenda of nitrous oxide shock doctrine debt capitalism, false flag opportunism and empire expansionism under the quintessential puppet president. George Bush 43.

Brilliant really. We've been schooled by the best. If we get through this rollercoaster to the end we'll have picked up some very useful lessons in spotting the finest manipulation, trickery and mendacity in the galaxy. 

These will be essential skills to ensure the empire can never strike back to anywhere near the effectiveness they once had.

Tuesday 15 November 2011

Terence McKenna - Eros & The Eschaton (Why Consumer Culture Is Brainless Culture)







"We have to stop consuming our culture. We have to create culture. Don't watch TV, don't read magazines, don't even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are -- NOW -- is the most immediate sector of your universe. And if you're worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered. You're giving it all away to ICONS. Icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that, you want to dress like X or have lips like Y... This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion. What is real is you, and your friends, your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And, we are told No, you're unimportant, you're peripheral -- get a degree, get a job, get a this, get that, and then you're a player. You don't even want to play that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that's being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world."

Thursday 27 November 2008

SALE SALE SALE


I went to Gaysorn Plaza, a luxury shopping mall in Bangkok today before having a wonderful lunch with Tim who generously gave me some time and thoughts on a simulacra post that I want to write at some point - he's massively brainy like that. Tim is a writer who also does restaurant reviews when not contributing to The Guardian, The Bangkok Post, writing a book or blogging over here, and it was toptastic to have a humungus steak and a charmingly insolent bottle of red which for professional reasons I was largely forced to polish off on my own.

I was struck how empty Gaysorn Plaza was. The luxury brands are commencing a world of pain over the next five to ten years and I think it's safe to say that the awful moniker of masstige brands may finally be buried along with all the other marketing hubris we inflated ourselves on in the bubbled up economy.

I was however delighted to see a few early birds taking a flyer and doing 40% discount sales which is unheard of in the run up to Christmas (widely celebrated in this Buddhist country - not the day - the festive season) but even more pleased to see that one brand has taken an interesting approach to the way that they advertise a sale.

Good recessionary thinking. Think up not down.

Tuesday 1 July 2008

The Bird's Nest

One of the great experiences of Beijing is the sheer velocity of construction which has had me pondering for quite some time on the implications of whole neighbourhoods flattened overnight with new superstructures going up faster than I've ever seen in my life. I've already talked about the CCTV building by Rem Koolhaas which we will never see its like again (and he knows it) but the other supermodel on the catwalk is the Birds Nest, or the Olympic Stadium. It's awesome. Period.
Here it is from some photography I took the other day. Notice the traditional peasant (migrant worker) in the foreground. I chose this pic out of the 30 or so I took because like the washing below it represents something about modern China that Noam Chomsky talks about a lot in this podcast here; the human development index for China is still quite low, around 70th if I'm not mistaken. 
There's a lot of people still running around on loose chained tricycles shifting bricks from one place to another. 
Wait till all those have offspring that want to go to college, drive a car and double China's GDP with the 'Chinese Dream' (One World One Dream).........Yeah, we need to rewire our economies and the answer might be most candid in Asian economies today. 
Not tomorrow.
I live only a stones throw from the Forbidden City and a short walk from Tiananman Square. Beijing is often a sooty and polluted overcast metropolis. It's also, in its own way the most tidy I've ever come across for its size. I've never seen a broken glass, a crisp packet or an empty packet of cigarettes on the road and that's because there is no litter. But still there are quaint signs of a rapidly disappearing life, and though I live amongst the political elite (and those who did them favours) The washing is still out on the road drying in the occasional spell of glorious sunshine. For when Beijing shines. It really does shine beautifully.
 
Sorry about the lack of links and layout at the moment as I'm using the new version of blogger and playing with new features.

Tuesday 20 November 2007

Living with yourself


Wherever you are in the world you may have scratched your head once or twice and tried to figure out what infinity means. Then when you'd given up on this you may even have reflected that we live in a world of finite resources. Fossil fuels are a great example. They are the reverse of infinite. That's finite to you and me. Once our selfish and greedy generation have used them up (like the fossil crack whores we are) there will none left for our kids. (Cue handing over responsibility to the scientists who make iPods we can put into blenders to show how clever we are, and will ultimately invent some mythical power that the kids can then forgive our first-come, first-served mentality)


We tend to fight wars over them, set geopolitical policy around them, have a century of the cheapest energy ever, and believe it or not make all things plastic out of oil before we throw them away in the contented illusion that what is OUT OF SIGHT IS OUT OF MIND. Other than that we like to fill up our gas guzzling SUV's from pipes at petrol stations and get scared if someone does it with a cigarette in their hand, because that would mess up our Christmas plans. Ah yes Christmas, where we go on another consumer spending bender topped off with orgies of indulgence before nipping into the vomitorium to make way for some more mince pies, Chrimbo pudding, presents and more cake while studiously avoiding any mention of the birth of Jesus Christ who I can assure you took frugality very seriously. Its time to make frugal a word to worship again. It may just save our skins.


So how can we do this while encouraging people to spend, spend, spend while achieving those growth growth growth (ugh) targets that make the world so tickety boo? Easy if you really think about it but it will take a rewiring of our economies, some sort of managed population decline and building businesses around recycling, sustainability, community and wait for this making money out of value not money out of stuff as Russell pointed out over here.


Anyway, just in case this is popping your amygdala out of its neocortex because your marketing and advertising acumen pays the mortage and the thought of saving the world really gives you a migraine then relax, because one of the worlds best thinkers on the subject John Grant has just published his book The Green Marketing Manifesto. You should stop sodding about and buy it immediately. As John puts it so eloquently in his book. If environmental issues are a moral question, then not doing the right thing is immoral. I say this is more important than reading the newspaper and casting judgement on others. Change the world. Change yourself.