re: #371 Fat Bastard Vegetarian

Maybe I’m being too literal.

Or not literal enough. To me, something really has value only if it actually improves someones quality of life, helps prevent bad things from happening, expands our knowledge so as to help us improve quality of life, etc. etc.

So a salesman, helping a customer pick the right product for them, as long as he’s honest, is contributing to quality of life; he’s sharing his knowledge with the customer and letting them benefit. That’s no problem.

But in advertising, you’re divorcing the ad from the actual products. The point of an ad is not to rationally and dryly compare the product with competitors, but to hide weaknesses and exaggerate superiority. It’s to connect totally abstract ideas like sex, wealth, and power, with the purchase of whatever the hell it is they’re selling. Advertising is, and knows itself to be, deception.

I’m not making a moral judgement on the people who do it; a man’s gotta eat. But that doesn’t mean I have to pretend what they do improves anyone’s quality of life.