Advertising and the False Comfort of Cynicism

In the modern world, there's no escaping advertising. Something like half the email in the world is spam. Webpages have pop over, under, around, and through ads. TV shows are at least a quarter ads. There's ads on buses, taxis, signs, buildings, supermarket floors, even over the urinals in men's rooms, or inside toilet stalls. You can't even PEE without somebody trying to sell you something. And besides the sheer annoyance of somebody always trying to sell you something, the thing that bugs me the most about this is what it does to people. When somebody's always trying to sell you something, you always have to wonder what somebody's trying to sell you. Even things that otherwise look awesome, you have to wonder who sponsored it, or if it was somebody really doing it. Here I'm thinking of those videos of "spontaneous" dancing, since flash mobs got hijacked. Or that Guitar Hero ad they made with the kid and the bike, and cheated it with CGI.

It's really hard NOT to get cynical when it's justified to constantly be suspicious of what anybody tells you. And that pisses me off. Cynicism is a false comfort. "Oh, if you don't expect anything better, you're not disappointed." Great, thanks. When did avoiding disappointment become a justification for enabling a half-assed civilization? The disappointment you "avoid" with cynicism and not expecting things to be better is a real slight comfort compared to the fact you weren't surprised because things SUCK. Way to go there. You keep your smug comfort. Me, I'm choosing the naive idealism that both we and the world can be better than now. Fuck your dystopias. We're gonna build a Star Trek future while you're busy letting the world live down to your expectations.