Jesse Hajicek

The observation has been widely made that people are drifting apart. That despite all the technology designed to make communication easier, we share ourselves less and less. That community is dead, and each man has become a fortress unto himself.

We've heard a zillion theories about why this is. Blame has been thrown in a zillion directions. "Internet friendships aren't real." "Email is so impersonal." "We use the telephone as an excuse not to meet face to face." We blame population, youth, age, politics, people being too different from each other, people being too much the same... it seems everyone has a pet theory.

I blame advertising.

Telemarketers own your phone. Caller ID exists because half the calls you get are strangers trying to sell you something.

Spam owns your email. Every time you check your email you're waltzing through a minefield.

Even in meatspace, when your doorbell rings you have to steel yourself to fend off salesmen, canvassers, and evangelists.

Junk mail has outweighed real mail for a long time, there are ads printed on every flat surface, and now you're even paying to see ads at the movies. Remember when nothing played on the big screen before the movie but a couple of trailers?

We've been trained to think of this stuff as a mere annoyance, nothing more than an eyesore. But I've recently come to realize that we're actually being hurt by it. Why? Because advertising fucks with your head. Deliberately. Aggressively. Advertising is no longer merely ugly or discourteous. It has become actively malicious.

Spam is the prime example. Merely by trying to bypass automatic filters, spammers have created an atmosphere of hostility; you have declared, by filtering, that you don't wish to recieve their communication, and rather than respecting that, they have put an enormous amount of ingenuity into bulling past your defenses. This is an attack. It is hostile. But what's worse, some of their methods are intended to trick not only your filters, but you yourself. Subject lines intended to sound like a coworker or a friend with urgent business. Faked return addresses that masquerade as well-known online businesses. Outright fraud, password-fishing expeditions disguised as financial statements or even scare-letters about your eBay and Amazon accounts. Lies. Cruel lies. Mindgames. Emotional assault.

It's not just spam. In snailmail, credit card offers now come disguised as bills. Insurance ads come disguised as magazine billing statements. Phone solicitors pretend you called them first, or refer to your fictitious previous business. Junk faxers use up your ink and paper with 'Here's the info you asked for!' Lies and mindgames.

So now we can't trust our legitimate correspondence either. Maybe it's only a split-second doubletake, or maybe you have to give it some serious thought, but every honest message you recieve has to undergo a moment's distrust. Is it any wonder that atmosphere of besieged paranoia has bled over into all our communication? Advertising has destroyed our trust in each other more than bad government or weird religion ever has. At least when the government tells you of its latest bad policy decision, it doesn't do so by sending you an email with the title, "Bill, I have to tell you a secret."