Advert Blue

Why do we dislike adverts so much in our daily encounter with the computer? 

It’s one thing, I suppose, to be bombarded with commercial messages when the service we use is free - like Facebook - but even there, the main product which that company - and don’t forget its grasping shareholders - lives from, is us chickens. 

 

We are the ones, we and our information, likes, dislikes, gender, age and location, which is sold to the companies who wish to better direct their products. The fact that a proportion of those advertisers (or ‘sponsors’) are attempting to sell us a dodgy product with ‘last few days’ discounts should warn us: but no - we fall for all these scams and traps. 

 

Right now, a targeted advert from some obscure company which probably started business a week ago arrives every tenth post or so, telling me of the virtues of some household product which can cure everything, please read on… It's just a form of clickbait, a bit like the one you see in downmarket newspaper headlines. If you turn to it, the new page will offer a wordy article about the hundred different uses for salt, for example, interspaced with endless adverts. Yes, the client company pays young Mark Z to place its advert, which is in turn, full of adverts.

 

What are the moderators really there for - to stop some delightful girl from Denver writing to me out of the blue proposing a relationship if I only send her five thousand dollars?

 

If we expect it with Facebook (or the other social media pages which I must admit I’ve not sampled), then what of the ordinary news-sites? As Elon Musk says - 'Fuck the advertisers'

 

Once again, if you don’t know what the product is, then it’s you. Which is why advertisers advertise.

This is particularly unarguable with a free newspaper. The blurb is just space that wasn’t sold by the sales-reps or the ad-manager. ‘We need some filler for page eight’ calls Layout from its bunker in the back. Then perhaps, there’ll be some advertorial (that’s to say, paid-for copy) on page nine. 

Adverts: so long as they aren’t too much of an irritation, then fine. But what about - and we return to the computer or the television screen - the pop-up advert that suddenly interrupts one’s reading?

 

Of course, the medium needs an income. There are staffers, writers, printers, photographers, distributors, lawyers, owners and shareholders to pay. But we have pay-walls, subscribers and a wealthy parent-company putting out its own angled-copy. So yes, advertisers too, but we don’t have to like them (sorry!).

As for the media-sites with pay-walls - do they expect us to get our news from a single source and shouldn't they be, in consequence, advert free? How many annual ransoms should one be paying to get the full range of reporting? Mostly, one can get around them anyway with a simple paywall-bypass.

 

Then we have the war between the useful ad-block extension (a practical tool for the consumer) and the ad-block blockers, increasingly used by the media. It’s a struggle which will never end.

 

And so we come to YouTube, which will drop an ad-bomb half-way through a spoken sentence. In the same spirit of disorder, Spanish TV - which I rarely watch - will think nothing of interrupting a film with adverts, which understandably irritates the viewer while the mood is irretrievably lost.

 

But what of subscription TV? How about when one has paid to be rid of those pesky plugs that  ruin our viewing? What have we learned here?  

 

Simply this: that advertisements, or commercial interruptions, are a nuisance and a pest. If you pay enough as a subscriber and a streamer, you might be relieved of them. 

 

At least in the novel I’m currently reading, which I got from the library, there aren’t any endorsements. 

And then there’s the cinema - at least no one would dare stop the film to promote a fruit-drop. 

 

Which brings us to this question - do we ignore the advertisers buzzing around like flies at the stables, or actively decide to avoid their products? 

 

It’s easy enough when it’s a BMW, but what about - and it’s coming up to Christmas - a certain fragrance pour l’homme, or maybe a message about the many uses for potato-peel?

 

One thing’s for sure - this article will never appear anywhere outside of my blog… 

The Investiture

 The debate and probable approval of Pedro Sanchez as president is upon us. I'm in the USA right now, but the wonders of the Internet put me as close to the action as if I were sitting in the public gallery of the parliamentary chamber. 

It's been a long road to get this far. The local and regional elections of last May were disappointing for the Government and consequently, national elections were called with what turned out to be ambiguous results. The PP won the most seats, but not enough - even with their far-right Vox allies - to take the house. The PP leader Feijoo tried in the two-day debate in late September, but fell short by a tiny margin. Now comes the chance for Pedro Sanchez (sorry, there are no accents on this keyboard). 

To get this far, Sanchez had to court a number of small parties - including the regionalist ones.  One of these is the Junts per Catalunya, with its erstwhile leader Carles Puigdemont living in exile in Belgium, fearful of capture and imprisonment (like some of his associates) after the illegal referendum for independence in 2017. Sanchez needed the Junts, and the price, now agreed, was an amnesty (it will affect around 400 people in all). Some consider this as a coup d'etat, but it is better to think of it as a solution to the Catalonian unrest, which has lasted over a number of years.

The PP (which could have avoided this if it considered the interests of the country over its own) called for massive protests across Spain during the ten days running up to the investiture. This naturally attracted the Vox and other unsavoury groups - sundry fascists, the Desokupa folk, Fake-news experts, the right-wing media, anti-abortionists and other religious nutters and, for some reason, the appalling American broadcaster Tucker Carlson (tipped in some circles as Trump's running mate). Then there are the Youtubers and other keyboard warriors working their nefarious magic from home. 

Outside the PSOE offices in Calle Ferraz in Madrid, the protests have been particularly colourful. Signs such as 'Sanchez: Spain isn't for Sale'. 

We should remember the number of public companies sold to private interests (or even vulture funds) by the PP in past times (such as Telefonica, Antena3, Repsol, Endesa, Aena, Gas Natural, Iberia...). Of course, as we see these protesters wrapped in their Spanish flags, or singing Cara al Sol, we are reminded that there's more to patriotism than just hating the Catalonians.

The point is, that the PSOE and its allies have the majority and are thus equipped to run the country.  Spain has been without a government since the elections this August. It's time this was resolved. Feijoo can't continue to call for fresh elections over and again until his alliance wins enough seats.