That Gillette Ad is full of shit

My overall thoughts are that the razor blade ad that apparently educates men on how to be men is a phony, abhorrent piece of marketing filth that dumbs down humanity.

First of all, of course I’m all for men and women behaving ethically, aligned with their morals and values and generally not being arseholes or douchebags.

Part of my work is in the field of helping men explore what it is to be human… and what masculinity is in its rawest and healthiest forms.

So I’m all for the idea that our culture and many others have perpetuated a notion of masculinity that has led to mass repression and trauma.

I know there is work to be done to address this, and many people are doing it.

But the day people start taking their moral/ ethical/ spiritual guidance from a company that sells disposable razor blades, and is owned by a conglomerate that is well known for its grossly unethical behaviour, and spends $7billion a year to spruik products that certainly do not help the planet…. is a sad day.

George Orwell would be laughing or crying in his grave.

It’s like some capitalistic- dystopian nightmare. The people fucking up the planet are telling people how to behave… and people are actually listening and applauding.

It feels like consumerism and branding has become so woven into the collective consciousness that it isn't even weird to people that companies with a clear profit agenda are preaching….

We have become so de-sensitised to corporate-social engineering that many people see the message as beneficial but do not raise an eyebrow at the method or messenger.

If people were to simply spend more time in nature, connecting in with the deeper parts of themselves, all the guidance is already there!

I guess I didn’t realise how easy it is for massive companies with huge marketing budgets to do marketing these days.

Jump into the zeitgeist to find a trending message.

Create a campaign around something really evocative and obvious, like “don’t be racist”, “don’t bully” or “don’t behave in any horrible way”….

Make sure the campaign aligns with an obviously positive behaviour, so that NOT aligning with the message, or even (in this case) not aligning with the method of sharing the message would make you a disgraceful barbarian in the eyes of others.

Turn people against each other with your vomitous virtue signalling… watch the ad go viral.

Continue business as normal. Pat your marketing executives on the back for generating mass attention.

It makes sense to explore the origins of advertising to get the gross core of this campaign.

Adam Curtis’, “The Century of Self” is an amazing documentary that explores how mass brainwashing attempts for wartime propaganda was the genesis of the marketing industry.

The tactic itself is incredibly harmful to the flourishing of higher levels of consciousness- because any time a human is incepted with ideas they are taken away from the wisdom that flows from the source- their ability to hear original wisdom from within becomes gradually diminished.

If you wanted to create a more dumbed down and subservient, consumerist world you would create more adverts like the Gillette one…

Why? The message is so sweet to those who crave a more fair, just and peaceful world, that the source of the message or the behaviour the messenger becomes forgotten in the righteousness of the message…

Imagine if Monsanto or a big pharma company made an advert campaign with a really great message like: “Don’t be racist… It’s time we as a society acknowledged our systemic racism, and took responsibility for the pains caused to indigenous peoples”…

…and then they became the company who use their mass media power to spearhead the surface level rhetoric against racism and cultural genocide.

Meanwhile, they keep on business as usual…

Is that net good for bad for planet/ humanity/ consciousness expansion?

For me, it’s a horrendous idea. It’s a perverse kind of manipulative virtue signalling.

“Hey look over here! We’re awesome and have your best interests at heart…. But don’t look over here… where our behaviour shows we are actually Satan incorporated.”

Another reason this ad is so gross was well articulated by a friend:

“Men who hang with other decent men and aren’t fuckwits to women don’t need Gillette pushing their virtue signalling on them. You can like the message but still vomit at the vehicle delivering it.

When #metoo was happening what I noticed was all these men coming out saying “I did this”, then getting a combo of virtue signalling and a ton of “you’re so brave” commentary.

Ironic isn’t it. Meanwhile the men who hadn’t been douche bags are standing there thinking “how about not being a perpetrator in the first place and needing a campaign before owning up?”

We are right to be very very cynical of virtue signalling like Gilettes because while it’s not duplicitous 100% of the time … 99% is close enough.”