advertising – Observations and Misunderstandings

Starline Social Club in Oakland has gone up for sale. I have never been to this venue, and likely won’t ever set foot in Oakland let alone this club. I only know it is up for sale because it’s sale was shared by a friend of mine on Facebook. Why this is worth mentioning is because it is yet another venue in the long list of such places that have already closed and others that will. Pubs are struggling but can invariably stay open. Numerous clubs, live music venues, theatres to name but a few examples are likely to go bust if this continues much longer. People’s safety must come first of course and a solution without some kind of financial assistance is far from clear. What the arts do need though is some kind of support.

Rishi Sunak the British Chancellor recently suggested that artists and musicians who couldn’t find work should retrain. There wasn’t any suggestion that they should be supported through this crisis, they should simply become something else. Here he is below doing his best impression of Will from The Inbetweeners.

He may as well have just uttered the ‘get a real job’ statement because clearly he was thinking it. Who needs artists when they can design images for adverts or musicians when they can be creating songs for adverts or playwrights when they could be writing scripts for adverts. How is capitalism going to function successfully if people refuse to exploit others.

More concerning is how this is playing out in the culture wars. I read recently that while the right won the economic war, the left won the culture wars but clearly both are still being doggedly fought. It is telling though that if you were going on probable likelihoods, the arts would predominantly be a theatre for left wing ideals. Are we seeing right wing governments in both Britain and the US intentionally allowing the music and arts scenes to go bust. Is this lack of support and funding simply an ideological attack? It doesn’t need too much of an imagination to make that leap. How better to attack your opponents by watching them struggle, hindering their chances of attacking you in the future.

There is one thing they seem to miss though. You can lose clubs, theatres and art venues but people will always be able to find a way to express themselves. If you try to take away their means of doing so they will simply come up with other ways. They are creative, they will be creative. And most importantly by attacking this scene they are simply entrenching anti-Conservative or anti-right wing capitalist ideals for at least another generation. People don’t forget. If pain brings out the creative, the grassroot streets are going to become a scene of colour before too long.

One particular bonus of delivering bread is that you get the opportunity to listen to a lot of podcasts. This week I discovered a new one called The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread which aims to prove or, more likely I suspect, disprove the claims behind certain fads and those made on behalf of products. They discuss things such as noise cancelling headphones, teeth whitening and 24-hour sunscreen. The two episodes I have listened to so far have been on CBD oil and caffeine shampoo. It turns out the claims made on behalf of them don’t quite stack up. The caffeine in the shampoo is apparently supposed to stimulate the hair growth but these claims it appears are not sufficiently backed up scientifically, the benefits if any are from the act of massaging the scalp and follicles. The oil was interesting because I have bought it myself in the past and was sure that while it was very subtle, there was certainly a more relaxed and calm feeling to my mind after a few weeks of use. It turns out it may have been a placebo of sorts but not that CBD doesn’t actually have that affect. Apparently to get the benefits made in the claims such as easing anxiety, depression and even heart disease you need to take a lot higher doses than the bottles can possibly prescribe. So the claims while being accurate to a degree are slightly misleading.

I heard first about CBD in random conversations, although at that point people were still talking about oils which contained both CBD and THC, the ingredient which provides the psychoactive qualities. In the last few years, coinciding especially with legalising of hemp and marijuana in the United States, CBD oil has gone viral. In the episode they discuss CBD chocolate, effervescent bath bombs and even infused leggings. I can imagine uber-hipsters wearing them while doing yoga and feeling all kinds of good about themselves. I bought some oil about eighteen months to two years ago just when people were really getting excited. I was most likely convinced to buy by all the positive stories I read on Facebook in articles, memes and others comments. Ultimately we were sharing advertising with each other, we were unconsciously doing the advertising; being both the process and the recipient. While it does provide useful services, social media is more and more becoming little other than an advertising platform. We spot the obvious sponsored posts but the smart ones are those which manage to integrate themselves into all the real ideas, science and news going around. This is just another front of the Fake News concept which in itself already feels like a tired old trope. It seems obvious and it is but sometimes it’s worth seeing and understanding social media from another angle. We’re not just selling ourselves but everything and to everyone.