Big Brother & the Holding Company
I
have been round the block too many times to be taken for a ride.
Time is running out, life is too short to be lied to anymore.
In
the three ages of man we first believe the advertiser’s claim or
the politician’s promise, in our more mature middle years we
tolerate the untruths - because we are complicitly compromised –
but in the invigorating climate of encroaching old age and second
childhood we can stamp our feet and shout freely that the emperor has
no clothes.
Between
them George Orwell and Josef Goebbles prophesied and practiced the
truth that the bigger the lie the more readily it will be believed.
Where they, and we, got it so wrong was to think that Big Brother was
a dictatorial superstate – none of us cottoned on that the lying
contol freak was going to be privatised, nor that we would subscribe
to it so enthusiastically. We have enjoyed being lied to and
controlled – have enjoyed being sold to and corralled into
supermarkets and identikit shopping malls.
By
virtue of their ‘Loyalty’ card schemes these mega-multinationals
now know more about you than the secret police ever could. They have
a record of everything you bought, when and with what. They can
track your movements across country from store to store and even
across international boundaries. Computer analysis of your shopping
characteristics allows them to deduce your marital status,
how many children you have, which partner has the major income (and
who makes the decisions) - even your sexuality is fair game. They
are looking at the newspapers and books you buy (and deducing your
voting patterns accordingly) and your children’s taste in films and
music. They are monitoring your increasing consumption of alcohol
and ulcer tablets. And their masterstroke is to kid us that it is a
‘loyalty’ card for our benefit.
These
‘supersellers’ have won the propaganda war. They have convinced
us that black is white and night is day; they present themselves as
the champions of choice while simultaneously destroying local
competition – what choice do we have when there is just the one
place left to shop?
The
word games take place on the shop shelf as well. Close examination
of the contents listed on an ‘Italian Style Pizza’ reveals that
this actually means ‘This product has nothing what-so-ever to do
with Italy’. ‘Fruits of the Forest’ yoghurt in reality
contains not the fruit from the forest floor but all the crap swept
up from the factory
floor.
In
the DIY superstore to replenish my stock of ‘everlasting’
lightbulbs I noticed they are now advertising their garden
floodlights as being ‘Dark Skies Friendly’. Have I got this
right – is their USP that their product will not work? This is as
non-sensical as vegetarian butchers and agnostic priests.
JB
First published by the 'Observer Group' May 2006
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