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Everywhere, it seems like, there are people and messages trying to make me feel guilty about myself. I don’t smell good enough. I don’t look good enough. My clothes aren’t nice enough. My home isn’t clean enough and my home isn’t big enough. My dick isn’t big enough. My face has too many blemishes and my teeth aren’t white enough. I’m too fat but I don’t buy enough poison disguised as food. My car is too small and too weak, a symbol that I am too small (particularly my penis) and too weak, and a sign that I probably don’t have a satisfying sexual partner. My lover isn’t good enough. My skin isn’t clean enough. My phone doesn‘t have enough features, and my computer isn’t good enough. I’m not having enough fun. I don’t have enough friends. I definitely don’t have enough sex. I’m not making enough money and not preparing adequately for retirement. I get sick too much and I suffer from all kinds of diseases: my legs get numb, I can’t focus, I get too nervous around people, and I don’t feel happy all the time. I’m too slow, too ugly, too big, too small, too dirty, too smelly, and I don’t have the right tools to fit into this world, and no one will respect me or sleep with me.
That’s what people seem to want me to think about myself. That’s what they want you to think about yourself. It’s great, because when you make people feel like shit, you can then sell them the solution to their problem. It’s also great when you can cause a problem and then sell the solution to it. Or better yet, cause or locate a problem, then sell a product that will merely treat the symptoms of the problem, but never make the problem go away.
I am angry that greedy businesses and marketers try to make me feel guilty or ashamed of myself so that they can suck away all my money. But I’m more angry that business actually dupes so many people into believing they aren’t good enough. I feel insulted, but at least I can usually see through the bullshit. How many people can’t?
People like to think they are immune to advertising. If everyone is immune to advertising, why are BILLIONS of dollars spent on advertising? If advertising doesn’t convince people to smoke, to drive certain cars, to wear certain clothes, to drink booze, to wear silly cosmetic products, then why do businesses spend so much to advertise these things? They do it because it works. It works! And so often it works by making people feel like shit.
Our media gets exported to some island that’s never heard of us, and within 2 years the women are suffering from poor body image and eating disorders. I feel sorry for them. I feel especially sorry for women. It seems to me they really get the shit end of advertising. IF you are a woman, it seems like what they tell you is that you are a servant and a sex object. A thing to be appreciated for appearance only. When a male politician goes up to speak at a convention or what have you, the media talks about the politician’s views, what he might say, and so on (they don’t do a very good job, but…) When a female politician goes up to speak, they analyze what kind of clothing she is wearing.
Advertising and public relations are very powerful. You may not realize it, but much of what you take for granted is an image that was bought and paid for by some corporation. The idea of bacon and eggs for breakfast? That’s just a good ol’ fashioned American idea, right? No. It is the result of marketing that took place long ago. Physicians were hired to say that a heavy breakfast, like bacon and eggs, was healthy, and then this advertising was directed at other physicians, and before you know it, bacon and eggs is what is for breakfast. Doctors used to talk about the health benefits of smoking - the doctors and their lying words were bought and paid for by powerful corporations.
They market our presidents and congressmen the same way they market our toothpaste. They market our wars the same way they market our toothpaste.
A new car isn’t going to help you get laid. A humvee isn’t going to make you safe. A big house won’t make you happy. A fancy new TV isn’t going to give you new friends. People aren’t going to care about your new body spray, because they are too worried about their own purchased, mass marketed chemical smell to think about yours.
I have no interest in participating in a system that exploits me, degrades me, tries to make me feel bad, all so that some impersonal corporation can fatten its bottom line. At the same time they are making me feel like shit so that I will buy their worthless junk, they are trashing the planet. I know that when I have all the crap they tell me I should have, I won’t be happier. I won’t feel better. I know this because as soon as I have all the crap, they will make up some new crap and tell me I need that. I’ll be like a dog chasing its own tail. That’s the point. That’s what consumerism is. It’s called keeping up with the Joneses. It’s called the American Dream. More like the American Nightmare.
They want to appeal to our sense of normality. I don’t even know what normal really is, since the modern American way of life is so different (abnormal) compared to anything that has come before (much different than even 30 years ago.) But they want to appeal to our sense of the normal. Everyone else is part of this exclusive club of normal, happy people, and if we buy the right products and services, we can be normal too! We can be better than normal! We can be gods and goddesses, worshipped by all the silly masses (our neighbors that we don‘t even know.) This is the YOU revolution. It’s all about you! All you have to do is buy the product…
There is variation in the human form. The human form, in all it’s variations, is beautiful. Humans sweat and smell. They smell perfectly fine if they are healthy, though you may be brainwashed into thinking some harsh chemical smell is prettier.
So much of what is mass marketed to me is bad for me. The underarm deodorant I wore for years causes cancer. It contains toxic chemicals that are linked with breast cancer (guys can get boob cancer too!) The makeup that so many women wear is poison. The shampoo I used to put on my head is poison, both to me and to nature. The medicines that are marketed to me are poison, to me and to the environment. The cars that are marketed to me are horrible for the environment, and for me too, since they make me lazy and dependent. The computers that are marketed to me are toxic. The TV’s that are marketed to me slow my mind and make me dull. No fun talking to someone who only watches TV. Think of it… millions of people all watching the same things all the time… what is there to talk about? Boring.
The home they tell me I should live in is much too big and requires far too much energy to heat and cool, far too many resources to produce, and isn’t even built to last. Here today, gone tomorrow, time to buy a new one. Likewise with everything else. Planned Obsolescence. Things are built to fall apart. They can make incandescent light bulbs that last 100 years (at least one of them has!) They don’t. They purposely nick the filament so it will burn out quickly and you’ll buy a new one to replace it. Razors are made to go dull, computers are made to be replaced in a few years, panty hose are made to run, and on and on….
The food that is marketed to me is devoid of vitamins and enzymes. It is dead. But it is full of poison. It is full of refined sugars that wear my body down, cause depression, anxiety and disease, and age me prematurely. It is full of processed flour that has no nutritional value. It is full of hydrogenated oils - trans fat- that blocks healthy fat and vitamins from working in my body, while clogging my arteries and making me sick and hungry. The food that is marketed to me is full of toxic chemicals like MonoSodiumGlutamate and Aspartame, which cause brain damage and nervous system problems and much more. The food that is mass marketed to me will make me fat and sick for life. This food will weaken my immune system and welcome cancer and bacteria and viruses into me. The food that is marketed to me has traveled 2000 miles on average before it reaches my plate, wasting so much fuel and causing so much pollution.
When will we say enough is enough? This stupid shit is not only worthless, it is harmful! We won’t give you our money for crap that makes us sick and ruins the planet!
Someone wrote about a “simplicity” triangle. Imagine a triangle. The 3 sides are labeled as follows: “Healthy,” “Good for the Environment,” and “Cheap and simple.” What this means is that what is healthy for me is probably good for the environment, and also probably simple and relatively inexpensive. What is good for the environment is good for my health, and also simple and inexpensive (nature does what it does for free, and it does it perfectly!). What is cheap and simple is probably healthy for me and good for the environment. This triangle shows the synergistic power of a simple way of life.
If I ride a bicycle, my transportation is simpler than a car, by far! The bicycle gives me exercise which prolongs my life, improves my concentration, and makes me feel good (endorphins!), while driving everywhere by car increases my stress, increases my dependence on forces far beyond my control, and makes me physically unfit and sick. My bicycle does not pollute the air or water, while the car does. And the bicycle is extremely cheap compared to a car (the cost of insurance and maintenance alone make the car more expensive than a bike.)
There are tons of examples we could use with the simplicity triangle. Sometimes it may seem to break down, as in the case of healthy organic food, which is better for you and better for the environment, but more costly than non-organic food. But I think that even in this case it can work out to be cheaper. I know a man who eats an extremely - EXTREMELY - healthy diet of only raw organic food for less than 2 dollars a day, and he has an appetite! He also lives very happily on less than 4000 dollars a year. How about you?
I feel bad for people who live a harried existence, bombarded and tricked by marketing messages and images all day every day. I feel bad for people who chase the American Dream, thinking that happiness lies at the end of that path, who come to realize on their death beds that there is no end to that path - the path itself was a marketing trick to make powerful people more powerful, and rich people richer.
I refuse to wear toxic deodorants. I like how I smell, and I don’t like how toxic deodorant smells. I also love the smell of a natural woman’s body - it turns me on. I love the appearance of an unshaved woman that wears no makeup. I refuse to wash my hair with toxic shampoo which harms the water and harms me. I minimize how much I bathe with poisonous chlorine and fluoride contaminated water. I love tasty organic food. I can’t stand sugar loaded drinks and foods that are hard or impossible to digest and which make me sick.
There is nothing wrong with me. There is nothing wrong with you. The problem is with these parasites who try to convince us there is a problem where there isn’t one. You can fight them by not buying their lies or their shit.
The more simply you live, the better you will feel. A simple life brings clarity. Time to think! Time to feel. Time to smell the air. Time to look at the beautiful sky, the beautiful ants crawling on the ground, the beautiful birds singing and flying through the air. Time to listen to someone. Time to talk to someone. Time to know and love someone. A simple life brings time to enjoy living and loving and community. A simple life is gentle on the Earth, requiring few resources and causing minimal or no damage. A simple life reduces stress and improves health. A simple life is cheap and frees one from boring, humiliating, monotonous labor.
Whenever someone tries to convince you that you need some new gadget, toy, tool, or product to be happy, try to remember this: a rich person is not one that has many things, but one that has few needs! The best things in life are free.
  
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Although I can't agree with 100% of what is said (I like taking showers, washing my hair, smelling "good", even if it is all chemistry), I can agree with the idea behind it. All the more power to you.
5*
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5/5, one of few "fight the power" speech that I agreed on.
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You should have finished your sentence way before the last line.
The moon the sky, its yours, its mine.
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A new TV would make me happy
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What a shitty write up. It's long and it boils down to a very uninteresting point: the OP wants to smell bad, be a bum, eat shit and then have everyone accept him for it.
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Korea (South)11577 Posts
lol at the above response. I love how it started out, but then it got sucky when you started to say you want an unshaven women... (eww). Live healthy = awesome. Bike over car = yes plz. Live in the country over living in the city = eurphoric.
I know by personal experience and not by what the media tells me that a woman who is shaved and clean and pretty (natural beauty > fake shit of course) is more attractive than a woman who is hairy and smells like sweat, shit and vomit. There are some things that the media should not do, and others are a nice reminder.
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Sounds like a mass marketing advertisement for anti-modernism to me 
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I appreciate that anyone even read the thing start to finish. Thanks for the compliments and the criticism.
To Ilovezil: this is kind of a problem of post-modernity (well, that's a label I'll put on it.) Everything is seen as hollow and meaningless. Life is a play of images without depth. Everything is image. Everything is marketing. Bill Hicks had a good routine about marketing where he talked about how marketers would take his own message as "going for the angry dollar... the self righteous dollar, the angst dollar... " and so on. The fact is, I genuinely believe in what I'm saying. Marketing isn't about what a person believes. It's about making money and increasing one's power (the power of a large impersonal organization, most likely.) I'm writing purely because it makes sense to me.
Anyway, I am not criticizing you at all, but I do think it's important to try not to let cynicism become too powerful in your thinking. Cynicism and apathy are both deadly poisons of the mind today.
To others regarding unshaved women: while I respect your preferences (I am aroused by shaven, fashion conscious women too), I don't understand how anyone could consider the smell of sweat to be anything like shit or vomit. Sweat inhabits a totally different category, and while I think it is an acquired taste, it can smell fantastic. You might look into research on pheremones (spelling?).
Glad to see anyone shares similar sentiments. Thanks for reading!
Nick
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On November 16 2007 11:19 nA.Inky wrote:
I appreciate that anyone even read the thing start to finish. Thanks for the compliments and the criticism.
To Ilovezil: this is kind of a problem of post-modernity (well, that's a label I'll put on it.) Everything is seen as hollow and meaningless. Life is a play of images without depth. Everything is image. Everything is marketing. Bill Hicks had a good routine about marketing where he talked about how marketers would take his own message as "going for the angry dollar... the self righteous dollar, the angst dollar... " and so on. The fact is, I genuinely believe in what I'm saying. Marketing isn't about what a person believes. It's about making money and increasing one's power (the power of a large impersonal organization, most likely.) I'm writing purely because it makes sense to me.
Anyway, I am not criticizing you at all, but I do think it's important to try not to let cynicism become too powerful in your thinking. Cynicism and apathy are both deadly poisons of the mind today.
To others regarding unshaved women: while I respect your preferences (I am aroused by shaven, fashion conscious women too), I don't understand how anyone could consider the smell of sweat to be anything like shit or vomit. Sweat inhabits a totally different category, and while I think it is an acquired taste, it can smell fantastic. You might look into research on pheremones (spelling?).
Glad to see anyone shares similar sentiments. Thanks for reading!
Nick
Well, as long as there's room for discussion, I both agree and disagree with what you're saying. True, the power of modern advertisement is so powerful, women are encountering more eating disorders and the world in general is becoming, as you call it, more hollow. Still, I think it's not as bad as you take it to be. The fact is that with more advanced technology, there are side effects along with the benefits. As fast as we are exposed to the goods (computers, makeup, media, and generally instant world we see today) we're getting our fair share of the downsides (disorders, esteem issues, exploitations).
Advertisement is just a natural part of the growing world we see today. If you're so moved by the negative aspects of ads, you should be striving to promote the good side of it instead of disdaining it in general, in my opinion. As much as there are ads campaigning for a certain product, you can promote whatever virtues you wish by the same methods. At least that's how I'd look at it.
But yea, instant sucks yet I can't live without it -_-
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On November 16 2007 08:53 i.play.ZERG wrote:
A new TV would make me happy
Lol. This is why you're probably my favorite poster.
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Ilovezil: there is always room for discussion, and I appreciate your comments.
I essentially agree with you on the first point: technology has its ups and its downs. It is always tempting to see things in black and white, but the world just doesn't work in digital. It works in analog, and so there is a spectrum of possibilities, which, for better or worse, means we have many choices to make. I think our society tends to take it for granted that technology is always good. Or, at best, some side effects are acknowledged, but considered the price to be paid for "progress." I, on the other hand, tend to take a more "backwards" view of things. I think technology often does more bad than good, but there are some exceptions. This is a really huge discussion, so I'll basically leave it there, though I am happy to pick it up if you like.
On the second point, I don't quite agree with you. It is true that advertising itself can serve a useful purpose to the extent that it educates people and helps them make an informed decision. It begins to be negative when it becomes manipulative rather than informative. The modern economy absolutely depends on manufacturing needs - turning regular people into consumers. We have to convince people to buy stuff they otherwise might not want, and certainly do not need. So we have to brainwash and manipulate and undermine, as I discussed in my piece above. A useful person to study is Edward Bernays - you can do a wikipedia on him to learn about some of the pernicious methods of PR people.
At this point, our world's resources are stretched very thin and eco systems are collapsing under the weight of humanity. I think resisting advertising, and, more broadly, consumerism is more important than tweaking advertising to make it better. Consumer society has got to go!
Nick
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As for those who, jokingly or not, mention wanting a TV, I'll say this: I am not a holier than thou type of person. I have strong views and I voice them. But I've watched lots of TV. I spent countless hours as a teenager in front of the TV. Looking back on it, I regret it. Rather than watching other people do things, I could have been doing things. Why watch others fall in love or have adventures or simply have fun when you could be doing those things yourself?
I believe TV very much encourages laziness, cynicism (of which a little bit is ok, but it gets carried WAY too far), and extreme apathy. Beyond that, the TV encourages some really whacky, silly values. Besides, the programming is aimed at people who are a lot less intelligent and thoughtful than half the kids on TL.net. Why waste time on that?
Just my opinion though. Peace!
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intrigue
Washington, D.C9933 Posts
don't agree with everything, but it was a fun read
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What I like to say is, the best things in life aren't free, they're stolen.
Good blog, although I stopped reading after the 10th paragraph or something. I agree 100% with the deodorant thing, I think it's the aluminum that causes the cancer? So I use stuff with no aluminum, but I gotta say, there's nothing hotter than a sweaty girl who just finished exercising.
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Haha, right on Titus. Yes, you can use "safe" deoderant. But I've just never gotten around to getting any, and I've been deoderant free for a year. I think you are right, by the way, it is the aluminum zirconium (is that right?) that is bad.
I have an observation: Since I only bathe once a week now, and I never wear deoderant, I've noticed that sometimes I start developing a rather strong odor, but then a few hours later it is gone. I'm also sure that it's not merely because I've gotten used to it, because it'll come back later, then disappear. Sometimes I hardly have a smell at all. As to bathing, I'm all in favor of it if I get really dirty. I just don't consider sweat to be a big deal.
While I'm posting, I'd like to say that I am really serious about shampoos and soaps being bad for us. It is possible to get "clean" soap, ie Dr. Bronners, that is not bad for you or the environment. Incidentally, you can use the Dr. B's on your hair.
Some people may think it's crazy to worry about taking in chlorine, fluoride, refined sugar, and chemicals in various products, but these things all act together to age you prematurely, make you sick, screw with your mind, AND screw with the environment. There is nothing sexy or fun about any of this. Healthy is sexy. The dominant society breeds disease and merely treats symptoms with more harmful products!
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Some people may think it's crazy to worry about taking in chlorine, fluoride, refined sugar, and chemicals in various products, but these things all act together to age you prematurely, make you sick, screw with your mind
Don't forget about that nasty dihydrogen monoxide shit! Fuck those damn chemicals!
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On November 17 2007 06:14 nA.Inky wrote:
Haha, right on Titus. Yes, you can use "safe" deoderant. But I've just never gotten around to getting any, and I've been deoderant free for a year. I think you are right, by the way, it is the aluminum zirconium (is that right?) that is bad.
I have an observation: Since I only bathe once a week now, and I never wear deoderant, I've noticed that sometimes I start developing a rather strong odor, but then a few hours later it is gone. I'm also sure that it's not merely because I've gotten used to it, because it'll come back later, then disappear. Sometimes I hardly have a smell at all. As to bathing, I'm all in favor of it if I get really dirty. I just don't consider sweat to be a big deal.
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People must love you.
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Hippopotamus: Dihydrogen monoxide? I don't know what that is! Please, do tell us all what it is and what types of products it's in! This is the perfect place to do it. I'd be glad to hear about it, buddy. Peace!
Nick
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On November 17 2007 08:52 nA.Inky wrote:
Hippopotamus: Dihydrogen monoxide? I don't know what that is! Please, do tell us all what it is and what types of products it's in! This is the perfect place to do it. I'd be glad to hear about it, buddy. Peace!
Nick
I think he was making a joke, because dihydrogen monoxide is H2O, or more commonly known as water. Don't take it to heart.
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EPT
