I remember watching a Bill Hicks interview when he described his censoring from the David Letterman show with the words “United States of Advertising,” which basically means that the companies that are sponsoring your favorite shows also control what can and cannot be shown during the whole time. So, it makes sense when Bill was fully censored (after being told that his show that night was great), because his jokes that night had to do with abortion. Little did he know that a pro-life company sponsored the Letterman show. That’s some serious business.

Watching commercials is something that I don’t particularly like to do, but it gives me a great insight of the world that we live in. The more I watch the more I see how those commercials reflect on the way that people behave. The same thing happens with movies. When people do something cool they say “it was like the movies.” Isn’t that strange? Movies are supposed to imitate our life, not the other way around. Come to think of it, the same thing happens with songs, magazines, etc. A commercial, however, has to be short, so all the gimmicks that we see have to be over exaggerated and memorable. Step inside the United States of Advertising.

Cars are my all time favorite. A car can never be a transportation device in the United States of Advertising. They must have a cool soundtrack, which coincidentally matches its trendy name. Everyone who drives that car must be smiling at all times and never encounter a red light. We sometimes forget that when they are shooting a car commercial there are cameras everywhere, but we never see them so we begin to question ourselves if it’s all real. Are those people really actors? I don’t think so. I think that they are just like you and me, it just so happened that there were cameras on their cars that recorded their jolly driving experience.

Female tampons/pads/etc. Ok, it doesn’t matter what techniques they use, those things are going to remain “a plug of cotton or other absorbent material inserted into a body cavity or wound to absorb bodily fluid” and “it is worn externally, between the vulva and a woman’s undergarment, unlike tampons which are worn inside the vagina. “ There is nothing glamorous in it. All of that camera work, song licensing and baby images don’t mean anything. Oh, and what’s up with pouring liquid over it? When did that become popular? Someone said, “oh, maybe we can imitate disgusting bodily fluid by pouring orange juice, that would prove how absorbent it is.” That makes it even more disgusting.

Food is a great follow-up to tampons. Why eat ordinary food, when you can eat food that is accompanied by songs, wit and extraordinary satisfaction. Why even eat? I get full just by looking at it. Most of the time the food that you see on TV doesn’t even enter your stomach. It goes directly to the food heaven that it came from, where M&M is God and pizza is delivered instantly with no extra charge.

Cell phones are here to stay. Not only do I have to see people using them virtually everywhere, I also have to be reminded what kind of cell phones people use or are going to use in the future. I think that cell phone commercials are a big reason why my bad generation is so dependent on a piece of plastic that let’s your mom call you while you are robbing a bank (for example). But then we have phones that take pictures and videos, making YouTube a semi-virtual dump of aspiring paparazzi. I am not a hater. I am just waiting for the day when I will use my eyes to record pictures and videos. Wait, I think that I am already doing that.

Reality TV is another favorite. Strangely, there are a lot of commercials advertising snippets of a reality show that’s about to air. If I get this correctly, people are willing to watch glimpses of pre-recorded visual images that depict what others were doing at a different time and place. This sounds better than taking AP History. Why even leave your home, when you can see a bunch of retards doing the same thing and fail miserably.

Game shows/news. It gets little tricky here, so bear with me. There are constant advertisements of game shows and news, which in turn advertise their sponsors like peanut butter and female pads (which is a great rock band name). So, the channels are basically advertising their most popular advertisement generators, which means that everything is geared towards making money. The only way to get out of this maze is to pay for channels like HBO, which keeps the channels commercial free while giving an insight to only those who can afford it. Stratification never looked so hi-def.

So there you have it – Bad Generation presented a complete guide to the United States of Advertising. The sad part is that it is slowly beginning to leave your TV and transfer to all spheres of life. Hey, why not? Those savings will come in handy when you must pay a fee to leave your home.

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