Television, the opiate of the masses, has many uses: entertainment, hooking up to your Nintendo, information by a warped press. People watched astronauts on the moon on television. People watched Captain Kirk on Rigel-7 on Star Trek, on television. People found out about the world's freaks by watching Geraldo, on television. People watched Beavis wave his l*ghter around, chanting "F*re! F*re!". People watched Slick Willy lie in election debates. People watch Rush Limbaugh remind us that Slick Willy sucks. But the best thing about TV is, if there is a show you don't want to watch, you normally don't have to watch it. You can prepare ahead of time to not watch Show X at X:00, because it would contain X and X, and offends people who are X. Normally, at least.
However, there is one problem with this system. There are things on TV you just can't avoid without abandoning it altogether. In fact, some are. There are things airing on television that catch you by surprise; they could be offensive, nauseating, demeaning, harmful, or even nonsensical. Where there is TV, there is commercials.
They just come right at you, at any hour of the day. Some commercials are on all day and night. The advertising industry has real power in this, because while one can say "NYPD Blue is on, so I'll watch Star Trek instead", one cannot prepare for a commercial. You could be watching a show, any show, and wham, a douche commercial, a Congressman holding an aborted fetus, a Barney video commercial, a Sleepy Says commercial, a Cinn-A-Burst commercial, or a three-minute advertisement for a disco collection on CD. And the worst is, you HAVE to watch them, or risk missing part of the show while channel- hopping.
Often I watch a commercial and ask myself a few questions: "Do they think I'm going to buy this product because they're doing THIS?" "Why would they pay the station to run a commercial so bad, I have to change the channel like I'm doing now? *zzt*" "Now let me get this straight, if I buy Pop Tarts and eat them at four in the morning on my front porch, aliens will land in a giant toaster-shaped spaceship in my yard and show me holograms of strawberries?" "Why do I know more about the latest in tampon technology than that of my computer?" "So, if I buy Cinn-A-Burst with OuTrAgEoUs new flavour crystals, it'll piss off my parents and they'll have a committee to stamp out gum?" "Why would anyone watching Beavis and Butt-head do what Sleepy says?" "Why must you interview 50 people and put it in a commercial to sell a magazine?"
And, commercials can influence pepole in ways no other show can. Sure, a parent can stop their small child from watching Tom and Jerry try to _KILL_ each other in cold blood, while allowing them to watch Tiny Toon Adventures or the like, but one would have to deprive their children of all television (and thereby turn them into total dorks and ruin their lives) to stop their impressionable minds from watching the many cereal commercials that promote theft (early Lucky Charms commercials), and discouraging sharing (Trix commercials, all the rabbit wants is some crappy sugar cereal), and telling the kids of the world that all parents/teachers/adults are against all aspects of fun-having, and that since this product is for kids only/is anti-adult behavior/is the only way to make your parents cool, you should beg your parents to buy it. Parents, of course, are completely powerless against these methods of brainwashing, since no amount of explaining can give a six-year-old any sort of defenses against the advertising media. Even later in life, the subliminal messages exist. On MTV, I frequently see a commercial where parents are in a total uproar about Cinn-A-Burst or Mint-A-Burst. On other channels, you see "old, cranky people" who are in a total uproar about Tropicana Twister. Frankly, the only reason one would even conceive of buying Cinn-A-Burst is to piss people off, I've seen better gum available in those gumball machines at the supermarket.
Personally, I don't understand what some of these advertising agents must be smoking to come up with certain commercials. You kn