Stumbling the Walk

Turn Off, Shut Down, Log Out

By Chris La Tray, 4-23-07

You may not know this, but the 2007 edition of TV Turnoff Week is upon us. It runs April 23 – 29, and according to Adbusters, the concept goes something like this:

The idea is simple: take your TV, your DVD player, your video iPod, your XBOX 360, your laptop, your PSP, and say goodbye to them all for seven days. Simple, but not at all easy. Like millions of others before you, you’ll be shocked at just how difficult – yet also how life-changing – a week spent unplugged can really be.

If you’ve ever gone on vacation and realized with a deep sigh how awesome it is to get away from the day-to-day grind of email, up-to-the-minute sports tickers and pop-up ads, then you know how liberating this can be. I think we all owe it to ourselves to make this week something of a mental vacation of sorts; who’s with me? I’m certain I’m not the only one who wants to reclaim my mental environment, even if mine is like something out of a Lovecraft novel.

TV is easy for me. We basically turned ours off about a year ago; had cable disconnected, and don’t bother to try and rabbit-ear in any stations the “traditional” way. It really has been life changing. The biggest change I’ve seen has been with my son. Back in the BTO days (that is my crafty acronym for “Before Turn Off” and has nothing to do with the great Canadian heavyweights Bachman-Turner Overdrive), Sid was like many other kids: a couple hours of TV a day had him carrying around a steady list of things he wanted. Snacks, toys and many other useless doohickeys moved in and out of his radar at the whims of the ad people that were assaulting his brain. Since the TV went off, his constant barrage of “I want that!” has been all but eliminated.

Now, in the heady ATO (“After Turn Off”) era, experiencing television is quite an assault on the senses. The only times I see it are if I get on a treadmill at the gym or hotel, or if I am at a restaurant. Either way it is stressful; my brain is clipping mere minutes in. Whether it is loudmouth pundits flap-jawing over the scandal/celebrity/tragedy event of the day or a sporting event interrupted every 2 or 3 minutes by 2 or 3 minutes of ads, my senses can’t handle the barrage. I cannot comprehend how people can watch this stuff day in and day out for hours at a time. Are they aware of what they are doing to their gray matter? Hell, I love some pizza, and I could easily belly up to a big, round pan of it every day if I could maintain ignorance to the certainty that doing so will pretty well destroy my girlish figure.

I know I sound like I am on my high-horse about all this. I realize that for some people, TV is a great way to unwind. So is a big gurgling bong. Either way you will likely end up relaxed (probably smelling bad and surrounded by empty junk food packaging too), but I guarantee one vice is more addictive than the other. The TV Turnoff Week event is not just about turning your back on passive, brain-addling entertainment, though. The real nut of the issue is about standing up to the overwhelming weight of the global ad industry coming into your consciousness every time you tune in or log on.

Try googling “Global Ad Spending 2007” and see what you find. Lots of money – we’re talking over half-a-trillion-dollars – is being spent to try and take your hard-earned dollars from you. It’s going up and up for a reason, too: it works. We have all seen the statistics about how in debt Americans are, how our trade deficit is so high (all those imports are coming in not only because we don’t make anything here anymore, but also because we buy a lot of cheap junk!), etc. We constantly binge harder than college kids after finals week, only in the case of mass “stuff” consumption there is no convenient porcelain god to purge your sins into. Another blurb from Adbusters comes from a reader named Rob Wipond, and he says this:

Studies continue to point to how advertising has negative effects on eating habits, self-image, attention spans and personal contentment. Meanwhile, pharmaceuticals rake in eight times the median profit of all other Fortune 500 companies, with top-selling drug lists dominated by anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, ADHD-meds and treatments for heartburn, high cholesterol and ulcers. So at what point do we bring all of this together and ask, Could bombarding people with thousands of ads per day actually be the main cause of the Western world’s epidemics of stress, obesity and mental illnesses?

Sure seems possible to me that the purges we balance binges with involve our good health and peace of mind. I know I get stressed when I’m feeling overwhelmed by advertising. And don’t get me started on the miles and miles of billboards you have to drive by on I-90 on either side of Wall Drug in South Dakota! It’s not just evil Wal-Mart ads either that piss me off. I get very angry when I feel like I have been suckered into making some purchase just because it was “green” and not because it was something I really needed. If I have to buy something, I try and buy local, and buy . . . shudder . . . as green as I can. But the “green thing” has clearly become just another insidious little marketing ploy by those crafty devils on Madison Avenue, just like “organic” has been assimilated by industrial agriculture. I’m not blaming the poor little men and women in the TV for making me do this; my anger is self-directed, because I know I should know better but I still get blindsided all too regularly!

It isn’t just TV. Ads are all over the internet, in case you haven’t noticed. Even Adbusters got me when I bought a pair of shoes from them (I sort of needed the shoes . . . well, okay, not really). Product placement in movies is also like getting slipped a micky at Stocks; one minute you are enjoying yourself and the next you wake up sticky, broke and confused. Just a week or so ago I was camped out in a hotel room in Duluth, MN, watching the Tarantino/Rodriguez flick “From Dusk ‘til Dawn” on my laptop. There is a scene where George Clooney’s character goes out and comes back with a bag of fast food burgers. All of a sudden I had such a craving for Wendy’s that I couldn’t stand it; I actually hit pause and went out in search of a drive-thru at 11:30 PM. And no, as good as that first fast food burger I’ve had in months was, the gastrointestinal rumblings that followed were not worth the compromising of my will.

The dark side of these ads is that as our sources of media become more and more consolidated, our access to information gets throttled down to, at best, the lowest common denominator. At worst, we are subjected to the whims of some stuffed-shirt finagling every possible means to cram more of our cash into his/her wallet. I don’t like the idea of living in that world. The Market ain’t the deity I pray to. I don’t want the companies buying the ads to control what our news outlets and magazines tell us. I don’t want to get suckered into wearing the logo of some company that cashes their checks 1000 miles away and gets their work done half-a-world away ever again (by the way, exactly how did those skateboard companies pull off the marketing coup to get their crap on the body of every kid in America, including kids who don’t even skate?!).

I intend to practice another little meaningless piece of activism this week. Meaningless because what I am doing in the privacy of my own home (a hotel room on the Left Coast for most of this week, but you get the idea) really doesn’t mean spit to the world at large, but if a few more people start thinking and acting on it, then maybe some good will come of it. TV is easy. DVD is easy. I don’t watch video on anything else. Internet? That’s a tough one. I work on the internet, so from 9-5 I suppose I will be asking for a mulligan. Afterwards? I’ll do my best. But I won’t click any of the damn ads!

Want to check out just how bad of a job Chris and his family are doing in getting their consumer habits under control? Check out the Voracious Project at Stumbling the Walk and then call him a hypocrite!

Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.