On advertisement

There is a great misconception about ads being content or message. They are not, ads are medium. You might think you escaped this mistake by giving ads a special definition as the promotional message. The reason for misunderstanding the ads comes from the parasitic nature of an ad to always show up within or next to the content while being transmitted in the same way, by the medium.

Let’s take a step back and use a simple crude model of communication theory.

1. Sender: The originator of the content

2. Content: Message or information that is being communicated.

3. Medium: That through which the message is sent (e.g., TV, Cinema, Radio).

4. Receiver: The person to whom the message is directed.

Conventional reasoning is that, exactly like other content, ads go through the medium, and medium is a sort of vehicle for this specific type of content. There can be no doubt that, in the case of ads, the message of where or what to buy something is clearly a message. Surely, conventional reasoning continues, the only way to define an ad as anything else, anything other than what is obviously a message passing through a vehicle of the medium, like any other content, would require a special kind of mental gymnastics and would be nothing short of pure intellectualization; meaning interesting at best but disingenuous non the less and ultimately pointless.

Is this fair enough? Did I cover the basic concerns of this “ad is a message” view? Hope so! Let’s demolish it now.

The first thing you should notice is there is something off with an ad in the medium that acts as sort of vehicle. The vehicle part is exactly what makes medium a medium and the finality of content is what makes something a content. What do I mean by this? When you’re watching a movie or listening to a song you’re not expected to do something else with this content. The content is self-standing and even when it has multiple parts, as in MOVIE 2, or a series format, you’re only directed to the same type of content meant for consumption and eventually finishing it. When content is in parts it is still part of one whole, grander scheme of ultimately one final thing. Meanwhile, an ad is never self-standing, and categorically can’t be, you’re always expected to buy the product or service it promotes. Unlike movies or series, it never points towards itself, never to the same type of content (ADVERTISEMENT 2?). Advertisement is always a vehicle for something else.
The confusion comes from this second part, “ad is a message of where to (…)”. This is the problem with models, the word “message” in whatever communication model you construct does not correspond with its intended model use, that is: content is the message (take a look at our model again!), but in the case of ads content (or the message) is outside (product or service). Meaning, if you insist on using a word message, an ad is a message of a message. A vehicle. And we know what that means.
Advertisement is medium.
Do note that I’m not trying to build any comprehensive system nor solve the general problem of classification in communication theory that has countless models including a few from McLuhan that classify basically everything as a medium, tho “the medium is the message” isn’t a bad idea it deals with something different. Namely, the impact of media on societies is greater than the content it carries. I also suspect postmodernists would rage on the idea of anything being self-standing, but this is exactly the tedious system-building and relativization discussions I want to avoid. One can spend a lifetime perfecting his model and be further from reality than when he started. I only care about showing this particular classification, ad as a medium, or more specifically parasitical medium - not the parasitical content.

Now why is this important? There is a larger point to all this but I will come to it later. First, we take a detour to Big Tech.

There is a historical narrative known and accepted by all of the Big Tech leaders and it goes something like this: TV conquered radio and became the dominant medium because it was more ubiquitous, mobile internet conquered TV and became the dominant medium because it was more ubiquitous, and the next medium that conquers mobile internet will be VR/AR (or whatever, insert any emerging fake tech here) and whoever is there for it first will be King of the world and whoever is late will perish. (link to Mark Zuckerberg's Email explaining strategy)

Whether this narrative is true or not is irrelevant. The accepted logic is that new tech always contains its predecessors for example TV contains mediums such as newspapers and radio and mobile internet contains all mentioned.
In a way, it makes sense that the company spends billions to survive the upcoming cycle and starts earning trillions.

But don’t we already have the new medium that conquered everything and comes in all forms and sizes, and is quite more ubiquitous? From flyers, billboards, and TV to mobile internet, is it not that advertisement is already the new reigning media that comes in all shapes and sizes?
Let’s take a step back. What exactly is Big Tech?

Well, we have Amazon, it’s like a store, a marketplace… you know metaphorically because it’s not really a store, it’s more of a place where products are advertised?

Never mind that let’s talk about Google, they are called Alphabet now, did you know that Google search is free? How does it sustain itself?

Facebook is free. How does it get its income?

Apple and Microsoft seem fine, until you realise they are carriers of ads.
(Where are robots and lasers?)

By now you should start forming a picture of how strong is this parasite medium (this and that). The less it’s contained the more chance is there it will kill its host. On a social network if out of 10 posts 2 are ads, 3 are product placements, and 4 are briefings and promotions about upcoming events, there is no more point sticking around. Likewise it doesn’t make sense watching TV if you’re interrupted by ad break every 10 minutes. Isn’t this also the main reason why Netflix got popular? McLuhan’s framework about media being more impactful than content should be revisited in this new light. Think of technology and the environment reshaped by the parasite medium of ads: buildings with sides already designated for billboards, professional sports clothing plastered with dozens of sponsors, average e-prostitutes doing product placements, etc.
We can’t really see the full potential of architecture creating “self-standing” buildings because a billboard is already directing to something external, nor the full potential of powerful aesthetic clothing design of most sports, especially most watched sports.

But this is just surface level, the real concern is the imprint is has on us, humans. Your average e-prostitute might look like Matrona in a boudoir-styled brothel but she is much closer to a teleshopping host, more of a vessel for products than an entertainer. The same goes for e-pimps, life coaches, or whatever they are called, selling you manshirts and mandrinks, and whatnot. This snake oil salesman routine can also be seen in “intellectuals” such as Harari who are incapable of doing one interview without being the regime campaign manager. Advertisement sets standard, as medium, not the content (product or service) it points to, propaganda could be part of an ad, it’s content, but that would already be something external. Billboard of a fat woman in swimsuit is not gonna presuade anyone about inclusivity on the content level, but it will send a message about itself: safe, family friendly, feminised (as in “loving”, inclusive, nonthreatening, doesn’t rock the boat,), minimal attention required, transient. Just look at your average idol, either from entertainment or sport it doesn’t matter, you know them for their excellence in their field yet what do you know about them? Every time you see them outside of their field it will be on an ad, promoting products or causes, and even if you get lucky to see them on a talk show chances are they will be promoting their next movie, event, product or service they started. But it isn’t like you’re missing something because there is nothing worth to know about them anyway. There is something disgusting, something humiliating about seeing a famous person doing an ad. It doesn’t even help them if this ad is primetime expensive where 30 seconds just to air them cost like a full feature film. Very telling.

I’m not trying to give some critique on consumer culture. My point is exactly the opposite, there are no more consumers, people are starving for content. Mainstream has hard time producing any real content and are often outclassed by anonymous accounts. Consumerism is dead.

In Marxism there is vulgar tendency to lump everything into the umbrella of commodification. Like with McLuhan this concept isn’t neccesary wrong, but there is danger of missing finer details when using grand concepts. I’m giving warnings about blindly accepting concepts of “consumerism” and “commodification” because there is an author who is relevant to topic of media just as much as McLuhan, if not more, Guy Debord, leader of situationalists. To this day his essay Society of Spectacle remains vastly underrated.

Before we go into the very relevant concept of spectacle we need to understand Situationalist in historical context. French intellectual scene at the time was dominated by Marxism. Using Marxist jargon was convention among all aspiring intellectuals and politicians, fact that often gets overlooked. True conviction was put to test in ‘68 protests. New Left, the antitotalitarian liberal force came out on top. For some reason Marcuse got all the credit, as one Situationalist puts it:

By May 20 six million workers were on strike; within a few days the number had risen to eleven million. Although many people continue to refer to May 1968 as a “student movement,” these figures alone should suffice to refute that illusion, as they refuted many other then-current ideologies: “Those who spoke of Marcuse as the ‘theorist’ of the movement didn’t know what they were talking about. They didn’t even understand Marcuse, much less the movement itself. Marcusian ideology, already ridiculous, was pasted onto the movement in the same way that Geismar, Sauvageot, and Cohn-Bendit were ‘designated’ to represent it. But even these latter admitted that they knew nothing about Marcuse. If the May revolutionary crisis demonstrated anything, it was in fact precisely the opposite of Marcuse’s theses: it showed that the proletariat has not been integrated and that it is the main revolutionary force in modern society. Pessimists and sociologists will have to redo their calculations, as will the spokespeople of underdevelopment, Black Power, and Dutschkeism” (René Viénet, Enragés et situationnistes dans le mouvement des occupations, pp. 153-154).

As you see Situationalist did not like Marcuse, they were often critical of both him and Cohn-Bendit, sociology student “leading” the “student protests”. Situationalists wanted real change, demanding universities and museums to be burned down, and Daniel Cohn-Bendit was doing the opposite, negotiating and making deals.

Situationalist were disbanded soon after because Guy Debord didn’t want them to become part of the fake opposition, the system was very good at doing this and was indeed slowly turning Situtionalist into another academic avant-garde. Publisher of Situationalist got shot multiple times, killed in his car. It is not known who did this. Guy Debord would later kill himself, his suicide still being debatable as an act of art or desperation.

And what of our charismatic German student leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit? Like many after ‘68 he would shed his Marxist skin, abandon his irrelevant anarchist movement and start calling himself libertarian. What followed was more predictable than expected (unusual sentence, I know, but bear with me).
He returned to West Germany that got inspired by ‘68 protests to start educational reform so Daniel Cohn-Bendit got heavly involved into Kinderladen movement - kindergartens with progressive education challenging traditional and authoritarian systems. Or translated: freeing children sexuality. In his 1975 book The Great Bazaar he describes his expiriences of being a kindergarten teacher how children would open his fly and stroke his penis. His talks about escapades with children are scattered over various magazines and old interviews, even daughter of Ulfriche Meinhof talks about this.
Few years later he joing Alliance 90/The Greens, and was co-president of the Greens/EFA group leading succesful EU parliment career.

Now we go back to Situationalists. Situationalists never deviated from the key points of their movement. Killing the movement saved it, and they retained both name and key points even in an old age.

What exactly is the spectacle? You know this, it is something very banal. It’s a phenomenon of an image becoming more real than its original, inverted reality where an image replaces authentic social interaction; a social media photo of being at concert being more important than enjoying concert, photo with someone becoming more important to your social life than friendship with someone, this complete decline:

“The first stage of the economy's domination of social life brought about an evident degradation of being into having human fulfillment was no longer equated with what one was, but with what one possessed. The present stage, in which social life has become completely occupied by the accumulated productions of the economy, is bringing about a general shift from having to appearing-all "having" must now derive its immediate prestige and its ultimate purpose from appearances. At the same time all individual s reality has become social, in the sense that it is shaped by social forces and is directly dependent on them. Individual reality is allowed to appear only insofar as it is not actually real.”

This is very banal today, but writing it in 1967 means it is nothing less of visionary. Let’s see a couple more

“The spectacle is the ruling order's nonstop discourse about itself, its never-ending monologue of self-praise, its self-portrait at the stage of totalitarian domination of all aspects of life”

“In all of its particular manifestations-news, propaganda, advertising, entertainment - the spectacle is the model of the prevailing way of life. It is the omnipresent affirmation of the choices that have already been made in the sphere of production and in the consumption implied by that production. In both form and content the spectacle serves as a total justification of the conditions and goals of the existing system”

“When the real world is transformed into mere images, mere images become real beings-figments that provide the direct motivations for a hypnotic behavior. Since the spectacle's job is to use various specialized mediations in order to show us a world that can no longer be directly grasped, it naturally elevates the sense of sight to the special preeminence once occupied by touch: the most abstract and easily deceived sense is the most readily adaptable to the generalized abstraction of present-day society. But the spectacle is not merely a matter of images, nor even of images plus sounds. It is whatever escapes people's activity, whatever eludes their practical reconsideration and correction. It is the opposite of dialogue. Wherever representation becomes independent, the spectacle regenerates itself.”

Before talk about Situationalists started I warned about Marxist concepts such as consumerism and commodification. This was not because I want to discard all of Marx nor do I have any feelings about abolishing private property. I consider all the economy vulgar topic, and care little for it.

Situationalists were right about images and noticed what they called Spectacle appearing in various forms. The problem was they didn’t know what to do with it, where did this problem of ontological decline come from, and why is an image central product of it, so they tied it to one-size-fits-all - commodity.

What they really stumbled upon was reflections and imprints advertisement has upon society. In fact, decline of having to appearing can’t happen nor its varous forms, nor can it be seen before advertising appears - so it didn’t.

What exactly is “The spectacle is the ruling order's nonstop discourse about itself” if not government advertising itself on TV in literal sense, or fat woman on a billboard, minorities in movies and whatnot, being regime’s signatures - advertisement, nonstop discourse about itself. It certainly isn’t mere propaganda. Situationalists failed in their mission to combat Spectacle, and not only that, their tactics of subverting it by various sabotage activism, same form of activism that was appropriated by no less than their old enemies - the Greens. Fundamentally, sabotage can also be used as advertisment, maybe it’s good revolutionary method to fight the Capital, the commodity, but proved useless against Spectacle (advertisement) because, like we said, consumer is dead.

I do love Situationalist, and will forever be greateful for being historical testimony against plight of sociologists and communication experts pushing safetism and control by blaming new media for what is clearly an older phenomenon. What we need is exactly the opposite of expert opinions on education, awareness, inclusion or safety - we need more danger. We need to make our enviroment too dangerous for advertisement. For our own sake, to not become an empty vessel, boring like an ad, like the name of this essay. Deathly boring name. But you see, being boring never stopped an ad. As phemenom still remains largly invisible, yet it conquered the world and subdued all the other media.

LEFTIE CHILD RAPE would be much better name. Spectacular even. I should do this, change the text as well. Obfuscate entire ‘68 thing because it might be confusing for the less sharper tools in the box. That’s right, make the content more conventional and enjoyble, ragebaity. Frame it into the narrative that is known and accepted. Click, click, click!