“The average TV commercial of sixty seconds has one hundred and twenty half-second clips in it, or one-third of a second. We bombard people with sensation. That substitutes for thinking.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Distractions everywhere. Our world has become a bundle of screens screaming at us. I used to complain about the big billboards placed on the sides of a roundabout, I used to pass every day. They were so distracting that people did not pay much attention to the driving, instead they slid through the roundabout looking at the announced sale or the half-naked women and then complained about the car in front of them for not blinking. Which could have been true or not, they were not paying attention anyway.
When I moved into my first apartment, we decided to not get a TV. It was 2011 and a big deal. Everybody looked at us like we were aliens and we soon realised; we were not able to keep up with conversations involving commercials. Yes, people still talk about those without noticing how much brain space it has been infested with these parasites. So much talent waisted. Just think about where humankind could be if we used our brains for more substantial content. Do not get me wrong, we were still watching a lot of movies and tv shows but online and then without commercial breaks. Think at the time waisted watching a movie with constant interruptions when you could have seen it in half of the time. Think of the emotions destroyed every time a commercial break comes up. You are in a deeply sad scene and about to cry when suddenly you see some actor in a white coat telling you about some medication you should take because, if you google it, you probably have whatever he is trying to convince you to have. And when the movie comes back, the feeling is gone, and the scene loses its meaning.
We even started to watch YouTube videos 1.5x faster to save time. You still get what people are saying, without the pauses they need to catch up with their thoughts.
Now, you cannot escape commercials. YouTube is infested with an average of 5 ads per 10 minutes[1] and they are getting more and more, Instagram shows you 1 add of 4 posts[2], almost every app you use shows you ads unless you pay for it, Amazon Prime shows you ads even though you pay for it… So how many ads are you watching a day? And do not tell me you do not look at them, because your brain does. Everything you see or hear consciously or not, has been stored in your brain, and it is taking up space in there. That is why we are more and more unable to concentrate on one thing. Because there are colours and sounds screaming at us from every side, and when we do not, the brain get’s confused, it thinks there should be something going on around us and it goes looking for it.
Everything we experience is food for our brain. And what comes out of our brain is the result of what we put in. How healthy is your brain diet at the moment?
[1] There is a limit of 1 ad per minute; c.f. https://www.ghacks.net/2020/11/20/expect-even-more-ads-on-youtube-soon/
[2] https://marketingland.com/has-instagram-increased-its-ad-load-marketers-report-as-many-as-1-in-4-posts-are-ads-264109
Aromatic deception 