You know what I can’t f#&king stand?
Billboards.
First of all, who can’t think of the episode of the Simpsons* where Homer is all excited to drive to work on ‘New Billboard Day’, taking stock of all the new products the billboards are instructing him to buy/trust. You know why you can’t not think of that? Because Homer is lampooning exactly what marketers and advertisers think of us. They think we will reflect on their loud, colorful, shocking and sometimes upsetting words and images and act on them – whether that means going out, buying an 18 pack of shitty domestic pilsner and thinking to yourself as you swill it “yeah, they’re right – there is more flavor!” (WRONG), thinking that the new show with Buffy is indeed ‘The Ultimate Double Cross’ or going out getting the disgusting, human race-betraying lap band** surgery in order to lose some weight.
Does that piss you off? That executives in boardrooms somewhere think you’re no smarter or able to control your ID than Homer Simpson?
It should.
The trouble is, what do we do about it? This is the question. I don’t want to rabble rouse and say, ‘go out and hack through the legs of a billboard by you’ because that kind of ‘rebellion’ is stupid; A) you’re gonna get caught and get a serious fine or go to jail and B) where’s that thing gonna land when it falls, and more importantly, on who? There are consequences to actions and knowing that will do you well in your time on this tiny, frail planet. But seriously, have things gone so far that if enough of us banded together in some way we couldn’t eliminate the problem? But how? What do we do?
First I guess I’ll ask that if anyone reads this and dislikes billboards as much as I do you leave a comment, even if only to say “yep”. Then… I guess we’ll see.
There’s a lot of talk right now about the ineffectualness of the “Occupy Wallstreet” movement, but I’ll tell you what, at least they’re doing something. One of my major problems is I am partly a pessimist and as such I tend to not think the economy – or most anything else wrong with the world today – is fixable because there’s too many people on this planet and that just gums up the works of change. That and via technology most ‘movements’ end up exactly like this blog – a virtual act of rebuttal or rebellion that never makes it off the digital page. What would I do if two hundred people commented here and said, “Yep”?
I don’t know. That’s the problem. So I’m also open to suggestions.
Yeah, I know there are waaaaayyy bigger problems in the world, but like I said, I’m just as guilty of not doing anything (obviously, again, I’m writing this as a blog on a pop culture site) as the majority. But one step at a time, right? I want to see… let’s just say I want to see, okay?
I’m going to post a copy of this on a few other sites I freqent and see what others think as well. The ultimate goal, in a situation where others were interested in pursuing trying to do something about this would be to influence someone in office or find someone running for some kind of local office, here- there- anywhere, with part of a much more comprehensive platform addressing waaay more important problems – being, of course, ‘REPLACE ALL BILLBOARDS WITH TREES’.
But we’ll see.
And yes, I recognize that with an economy in the shape it’s in, billboards represent the end result of a lot of people’s jobs. And we don’t want to lose anymore jobs. But the other end of the idea is, I suppose, similar to big Oil – when there’s a problem and a resultant change you make the source of the problem change in a way that will require those jobs to tranistion and carry through the new protocols implemented. I’m not suggesting we go after peoples’ careers, just that we change them to benefit the world we live in.
Oh, idealism… always leaves you open for criticism, yet still we mush.
…………………….
* And what does it say that I’m referencing real life to a cartoon?
** And this girl was on all of them and as such is a traitor to the human race. If anyone sees her, please address her as such:
