Brutally Honest Rant - 10/10/07

Brutally Honest Audio Rant: The Worst Fears – Part 2
Audio Transcripts
10/10/07

[Start Program]

(Computer – Introduction)
(Music intro – “American Idiot Remix” – by Green Day and David Matthews 2)

Good evening and welcome to this week’s Brutally Honest Rant. I’m David Matthews 2, writer of the weekly online column Brutally Honest.

We’re continuing our month-long look at The Worst Fears, since this is the month of October, the time of ghost stories and things that scare the crap out of people.

There are some things like terrorism that really scare the crap out of people. There’s a movie called “Right At Your Door” which shows what happens when a so-called “dirty bomb” goes off in Los Angeles and how it affects this one couple.

But it really doesn’t scare everyone! There are some folks who will look at that situation and just won’t lose any sleep over it. Not that they can’t envision it or think that it can’t happen, but simply because it’s just not the thing that scares the scrap out of them.

Hey, I know that pisses off the neo-cons but let’s get brutally honest here… just like you can only fool some of the people some of the time, you can only use the same things to scare some of the people some of the time, and you certainly can’t use it to scare ALL of the people ALL of the time.

So with that in mind… it’s time to tell another story about another person’s worst fear…

(Lead-in music – “Heavy Price Paid” by Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori)

The message is everywhere!

That’s what Ed tells people.

He used to say it with pride. He used to BOAST about how he could get the message out there by any means necessary. Laws didn’t matter. Rules didn’t matter. All that mattered was that the message got out.

It doesn’t matter what the message is either! It could sell baby products. It could sell overhyped vehicles. It could be about a new church or the re-release of an old movie. The message is ANYTHING that needs to be said, hyped, or sold.

It has been Ed’s job to get the message out, and he and his friends did just that. And they would not stop coming up with ways to make sure that the message was EVERYWHERE… and getting paid quite well in the process.

The message appears in every print publication. It isn’t just in a corner or in its own separate page… it’s over the published articles, under it, even in between the spaces. It’s in mice-type and watermarks.

The message is in every televised broadcast. Every long pause, every momentary breath of air, every blank pause between scenes is filled with the message. The message appears in every corner of the broadcast, over the broadcast, under the broadcast, and even the products shown or referenced in the broadcast are all specifically and strategically placed to further hype the message.

The message appears on every vehicle, both new and used. It’s on the outside, on the inside, in the mirrors and the windshields, in the blinds and in the lights. It’s on the dashboard and the steering wheel. Every spin of the tires is another presentation of the message. Every start up and shut down sings another message.

But even that isn’t enough for Ed and his friends. The message has to be EVERYWHERE!

The message is on the roads, on billboards, on the face of buildings, on large rocks and mountainsides. It’s shown in the air and in space, displayed on clouds both natural and artificial. The artificial clouds were Ed’s favorite idea. He called them the world’s largest billboards. At least until they could come up with the suborbital ones.

The message is on the ground. It’s floating on the surface of ponds and lakes. It’s carved into the landscape and displayed on passageways. Every blank spot on a wall is filled with the message. Every staircase step has the message, every conveyor belt, every elevator, every office and in every office cubicle.

The message is even on animals. Pets and livestock have been previously untapped places for the message to get out, but Ed and his friends made sure that this was thoroughly exploited too.

The message is even on every human being. It’s on every blank space of exposed skin, every article of clothing, interwoven in hair styles. Every snap or buckle or zipper is a jingle waiting to be expressed. Every step made with boots or shoes express the message in lights and in sounds.

Every time someone blinks, there is a new message that is shown on the back of their eyelids. Every splash of water is a jingle being sung. The message is transmitted on ultrasonic frequencies, even broadcast to us while we sleep so that our dreams would be filled with the message.

The message really is EVERYWHERE!

And THAT was the problem!

While Ed and his friends were basking in the glory of their final accomplishment, they had no idea what the human reaction would be to having the message in their face at all times, both consciously and subconsciously. Some people had seizures. They would suffer from nervous breakdowns from having too much information in their faces. Ed and his friends would, of course, offer the usual medical solution for those rare instances. But they had no solution for what the rest of the civilized world would do.

When faced with overlapping and overwhelming messages… the rest of humanity simply learned to filter it all out.

Not just some of the message or the ones transmitted in certain methods. ALL of the messages. ALL of them! Everywhere!

People would hum certain messages subconsciously but they would have no idea what they were humming. They would jot down the message as idle doodling, but have no idea that they were writing anything, and wouldn’t even see what it was they were writing down. To them it was junk.

Ed and his friends tried EVERYTHING they could. They tried to make the message louder, brighter, more obvious. It didn’t matter. Nobody could recognize it. Nobody would accept that it existed.

The message WAS getting out there. But nobody was getting it.

Ed finally suggested the unthinkable… that perhaps they should simply STOP sending the message out, or at least to cut back on the various and overlapping methods of it being delivered. But his friends balked at that. Nobody wanted to have THEIR message cut out. And nobody wanted to cut down on the methods being delivered. After all, there was even the slightest of statistical chances that SOMEONE was making a purchase BECAUSE of the message, and THAT would supposedly make it worth the effort.

Welcome to the worst fear… of an advertising executive! Being stuck in an advertising-run world of their own creation, only to find that nobody can comprehend what is being advertised.

(Computer – some stuff that you have to listen to understand)
(Fade Music In – “Mythodea” by Vangelis)

Perhaps one the greatest fallacies that has been built up when it comes to advertising is that IT actually rules the world. Advertisers have effectively taken over all forms of communication, from newspaper to radio, radio to television, and television now to the Internet, and even from there into telephones. They have all spread this fallacy that all methods of communication are about one thing and one thing only… ADVERTISING.

Take a look at some of our personal nuisances in society: Spam mail, telemarketers, junk faxes. What are they? They’re all abusive forms of ADVERTISING! Guess who bitches the most about video recording devices like TiVO? Advertisers. Why? Because we’re skipping their ads!

Advertisers seem to forget that in the larger scheme of things that they’re just the middlemen. This is not an AD-driven society. They are not the END result. They are simply the MEANS to an end. This is a PEOPLE-driven society. This is about CONSUMERS... otherwise known as PEOPLE. PEOPLE are the end result.

At some point the advertisers will figure it out. Hopefully they’ll do it before their actions thoroughly cut off the hand that feeds them.

(Pause)

Brutally Honest is a Get Brutal production; all opinions expressed are those of the commentator, and may or may not be shared by the online provider. This is David Matthews 2 saying good night, and I’ll speak with you soon!

(Fade out)
(Computer – Ending/“End of Recording”)

[End of program]
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