I Hate

Articles

I Hate

By Tom Pain
May 20, 2006

There, I've admitted it. There are things in this world that I hate. There are things that I only have to hear, or see, or be near, etc., and the hair rises on my neck and I can’t sit quietly.

I know this is not an admirable character trait, although I am proud of a couple of my hatreds; and I know I should hide, or at least not express, my hatred at times. I find it very hard to do. Worst of all, I can be accused of hypocrisy since I am actually paid to ply a trade that is one of my greatest hatreds. Granted, my employer is not the type that offends me the worst, but just introducing myself by my work-related title grates at my soul.

I want to tell you about some of my hatreds, and I'll start with the one to which I've just alluded.

I hate advertising. Yes, I'm a Director of Marketing for a Fortune 500 company and I hate advertising. Not the concept of advertising, telling the world about the goods or services you offer does not offend me (and that's all our company does). I hate what advertising has become, and how it has changed our society for the worse.

In the early days of modern advertising, when its home on Madison Avenue in NYC was born, advertising had value. The new media of radio, then television, offered a quick and cost effective method for making a national audience aware of your product. Very few products sold to a national market, there were many regional and local brands. Advertising could reach a wide market and the commercials were designed with a wide and diverse market in mind.

Today, brands have consolidated to the point that there are few local or regional brands, most advertising pitches well-known brands; brands whose commercials we've seen thousands of times.

At my age, am I going to buy Budweiser because of their new commercial? Hardly, if I'm not already a Bud drinker, the commercial, no matter how great, will not change my mind. The same, as it applies to older (+30) people, can be said about 90% of the commercials on radio and TV.

So, who do these commercials target? Two audiences - the young and the gullible, and the repercussions of that strategy is ruining our society. Why, you ask? Because all programming is developed with the advertiser in mind - that's who pays the production and broadcast costs. And since those advertisers are focused on the young and gullible, they demand programming that attracts the young and gullible. Bear with me here . . .

Because so much programming targets the young, young people have become arrogant - they believe the world revolves around them and have no respect for the older generations. I think you can take this theory from here, if not, just approach any teenager and see how much respect you get.

I hate celebrities - or at least those who Hollywood tries to make us believe are celebrities. Of course, this ties back to advertising because without the money those advertisers con out of the young and gullible, the doofus celebrities would not get paid astronomical salaries that let them lead lives that the young, gullible, and losers of society would envy.

Acting, singing, playing music, and sadly, writing for those people requires very little unique talent. Go to any of thousands of karaoke bars across the country on any given night, and you'll hear someone who can sing as well as 95% of the famous singers. There are literally thousands of people in our country that can play a guitar, piano, etc., as well as 95% of those famous for that skill. Visit the local playhouse in your area and you'll see a number of very decent actors, as talented as 95% of the TV and movie stars.

Yes, there are about 5% of Hollywood “celebrities” that truly have unique and superior talent, but the truth is, most of those people would perform for free if need be - this is their calling in life, they truly love their craft.

Should those uniquely talented celebrities earn a great living - sure they should, $300k - $500k per year is a great living and more in line with the value they bring to society. If anyone deserves to make millions, it is only the producer who invests the money to stage the event. Instead, we have no-talent sluts like Paris Hilton and Matthew McConaughey earning millions because Hollywood has drummed it into everyone's head that they are beautiful and talented. Heck, we have UK writers claiming Spike Lee is a GENIUS just because he can read a history book and tell actors to act out what it says.

Hollywood has skewed reality and corrupted the priorities for an entire generation of Americans - all for the sake of their advertisers. Instead of the entertaining, witty, creative movies and TV shows of my youth, today we get trite, rehashed sequels of those old movies with nearly naked actors substituted, vulgar language inserted, and computer-generated special effects dominating. Instead of the beautiful music of my parents' generation, with full orchestras playing complex arrangements; or even the masterful playing of guitar, bass, keyboards, and drums of my generation's rock and roll bands (many of whom were dang ugly); today we get plastic surgery-enhanced Barbie and Ken dolls lip-synching to a boring background beat that was programmed on a computer. Or worse, we get rappers spewing vulgar poetry at an eighth-grade level with noise in the background that really shouldn't be called music by any definition of the word.

And don't even get me started on the “celebrity authors.”

Like most people, I hate thieves, con artists, and good-for-nothings. Unlike most people, I include most Americans receiving government entitlements, all those advertisers, half of our country's government workers, many professional athletes, and almost every politician in one or more of those groups.

I also include most of the senior managers of our country's largest public corporations. I do not understand why those CEOs can be worth $20m, $50m, even $100m per year. That money belongs to the shareholders of the company. Yes, some CEOs are more talented than others, but $1-$2m per year is damn good money; no one should complain of such a salary. If a CEO is talented and wants to earn more - he/she should go start their own company and quit stealing money from shareholders. The system is totally corrupt, with cross-pollinated Board of Directors approving huge salaries, windfall stock options, and unbelievable golden parachutes to each other in return for the same treatment to the next person in the circle, with the circle eventually coming back around to them.

Finally, for today anyway, I hate liars and manipulators of the truth. That is why I write on UK, to point out those people to the crowd. Unfortunately, we've weeded out most of those and I don't have as much to complain about. Unfortunately, that didn't leave too many writers left and our contributions are only trickling in now days.

I hate that.

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About the author Tom Pain: Just an American boy with so much common sense, it hurts.

Email: thomas.pain@direcway.com

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