The Age of Advertisement
Humanity as Commodity
We live in an age of advertisements. Everywhere you look, whether it's your phone, your television, bus stops, or just on the side of the street — there are ads everywhere. Everything is funded by ads, and companies thrive on creating a “hip” and “cool” way for you to purchase this product. Although this is a problem systemic to capitalism and existed before technology, it has only been exasperated by the introduction of the advertisement algorithms that track our online behaviour. There are four ways the human being is devalued that I will discuss.
Problem 1: The commodification of the human being
The first issue with the matrix of ads that we encounter every day is that it transforms the human being into an object. We once used to be people who knew each other and cared for one another. Markets and shops existed to serve the community that they were in and were owned by the neighbours down the street. Now, rather than being a person, you are a set of numbers tracked in an algorithm that seeks to constantly fill your mind with random images designed to extract money from you. The corporate overlords that put the algorithms into place don’t care about you — they just care that you give them money. You are no longer a person, you are simply an object to be prodded for cash.
Problem 2: The captivity of the screen
Our technology has been designed with addiction in mind. The more time that you spend on your phone, the more time you are going to spend watching advertisements, the more money companies are able to extract from you. Because of this, social medias and addictive videos are designed in such a way to keep you watching. The funny thing is that it’s so transparent that we have a name for it: clickbait. You are being enticed to click on a video so that the publisher of the video gets money from you watching an ad, the streaming platform gets money for hosting the ad, and the company that created the ad gets money from you getting their product.
Problem 3: The transformation of art and expression
The next problem we have all witnessed is the transformation of art and expression into commodity. Rather than the creation of art for the purpose of talent or creativity or value, it is being created to simply get you to click on the next item. Content creators make videos not because they believe they are expressing themselves or creating valuable art, but to make a cheap buck. Even something as simple as a joke becomes a branded attempt to get you to buy product. The existence of “brand Twitter” shows us this as plainly as possible. Brands simulate human personas to be “relatable” to the consumer and make you feel positively about purchasing their product.
Problem 4: The simulation becomes hyperreal
Since the internet is fully transformed into a wasteland of ads, the next step is to transform the outdoors. Now, you might say that we already have advertisements everywhere outside, which is true. The capitalist age we live in has already transformed the outdoors into a profit machine. However, the vast majority of nature is still untouched. Ad centres are typically centralized to major cities, and we don’t see anything if we go out into the woods. However, this may be coming to an end thanks to Elon Musk because he is launching a billboard into outer space. The billboard will be small and unobservable from the ground, but this is a gateway to the end of nature’s freedom. Where Elon goes, many follow. All it takes is one mega-corporation like McDonald’s to realize that they have the resources and the political power to also create a space billboard — but one that everyone in the world can see all the time, no matter where they are.
The age of ads is a product of capitalism, but let us not forget that it is has been accelerated by technology. Both of these factors go together, and to reclaim our humanity we must not forget to dismantle both of them.
