11/26/2003

zacky(08:36):
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True, but how else are you going to survive in such a wildly capitalist society? I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying it IS. The substitute just came up and told me to get back to work, so I'll continue this later. Keywords to help me remember what i was thinking: alternatives, word of mouth, damn the ringing bell.
}

11/25/2003

Katie(21:35):
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ok. i'm going to tell you why advertising is evil. this is very much influenced by the documentary "the ad and the ego" which we watched in broadcast journalism class and which i highly recommend.

first of all, most of us will say that we aren't affected by ads, because we don't pay attention to them. but, gasp, we ARE. subconsciously. we are led to accept the ideas of beauty and success that we are shown in commercials as reality. advertisements do not function as solutions to your problems. they GENERATE problems and they GENERATE anxiety and then they give you solutions to these things. a dumb example, but for instance, body odor. it was ENTIRELY created by advertisements. before body odor products, no one even thought about body odor. go figure. ads are, as the documentary says, a kind of reverse therapy. they create in us an inner state of conflict rather than an inner state of peace with oneself. advertisments are also in some way responsible for abuse towards women. obviously not entirely. but the first step of violence towards another human being is making that person seem like they are less than human. which is how women are portrayed in many commercials. and the worst thing of all? the reason our culture of consumers is able to be so capitalist and have so many resources is a result of the countries plagued with scarcity who provide these resources. by being so immersed into the capitalist culture, mostly by advertisements, we no longer view the people overseas as real people, but simply as competitors for our precious resources and products. which is why we can accept all the violence and war we wage on them. also, we as humans view freedom as freedom from government. but we don't even consider the huge corporations who subconsciously control our insecurities- and make us think that we will gain fulfillment and that we NEED fulfillment through these objects they sell us. we are just as much brainwashed, probably more, by them as we are by the government.

that was really long. and basically just a less effective summary of that documentary, which YOU SHOULD SEE!
}

shagee(21:08):
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advertizing is like a mixture. there's good advertising and there's bad advertising. it all depends. just like how there's good people and bad people. actually, now that i think about it, there only seems to be bad people nowadays. o man thats sad. but anyways, advertisments can be a very good thing when they're used properly. for example, ads for awareness. actually those are public service announcements. they're related though, right? hmm... some ads are funny...
ok my point was not well argued. i agree with zack though, that advertising is necessary to survive, because without it you can't make enough money, meaning that you can't survive. but it is also true that advertising is becoming more and more manipulative, by twisting statistics and lying. as my english teacher said today:
"you can prove anything with statistics..."
for example, i could take a survey of how many people got a 1600 on the SAT's. when i do this however, i could be sure and take the survey of all indians which i KNOW got 1600's, and all white people who i KNOW got like a 4. [which is sad cuz they give you like 40 points for your name, don't they?] well anyways i could use this data and say that "all indians are smarter than white people." which isn't necessarily true. thus, by using this in an ad, i would not be lying.. or at least not directly. if the advertisers just used ads to tell people that their product was out there, it would be fine.

o wait! advertising IS evil, because they pre-empt shows with hour-long advertisments about some miraculus new crappy product, which comes with like 15000000 different FREE GIFTS, and it only costs 14.95!! YAAAY! wait a second, all gifts are free. why would a gift not be free? i thought that was the point of a gift! why be redundant? BECAUSE THEY ARE EVIL!
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zacky(08:56):
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I don't think advertising is evil, but I think lying to people you want to take money from is evil. So is saturating everybody's mind with usless junk. Like it or not, the US is not a ararchic socialist paradise, it's a democratic capitalist not-so-paradise. So basically, you need money to survive inside the system (les not get out of the system right now) and you get money by selling things. How do you sell things? You advertise, or else you won't reach enough people to make enough money to supporrt yourself. But there is a point at which youare just a greedy bastard invading the lives of Americans. That point isn't very well defined, though.

PS: But Blogger must be better because I have one. In fact, I have FOUR. WHAT NOW?
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11/24/2003

Katie(23:05):
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whoo, i want a bagel!

yeah anyway. people blog because they like writing down what they did in a day. it makes them feel accomplished or something. and online journals are doubly appealing because you get to see what people think of you/ your thoughts. moreover people just like to rant.

xanga is better because i said so. and i have one. so it must be better. end of discussion

more questions!

1. is advertising evil? why or why not? (i will respond later. and whoa will it be big.)
2. actually i only had one question. this one is a freebie! yay!
}

zacky(18:20):
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Actually Scott, that's not true. I use blogger for my own personal site, and if you go to http://xanga.com/iwantabagel, you'll see a xanga created by our very own Katie Frank, where anybody can post anything. And also, you didn't answer the first two questions.

PS: I think the site looks good this way. You don't like it? Start posting more and maybe you can have some influence over what the site looks like. Arr!
}

11/23/2003

scott(09:05):
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If i knew HTML, it would be smaller...

I use Xanga, I use blogger, I have no prefrence. Xanga is more of a journal that you let everyone see for some reason, where as this is more of a forum.
}


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