That Magical Mute Button
There are a lot of folks who’ll tell you that one way to get out of the consumerist rigamarole and escape the constant bombardment of advertising is to not watch TV. I remember a band called “Ned’s Atomic Dustbin” (the band name was inspired by a Monty Python sketch, I believe) had a sticker that said “Kill your television”.
That’s a great idea, but the only problem with this plan is that you would miss out on the all the TV out there that is actually good. And what about watching DVDs? I mean…hey, I may be aspiring to a hippy lifestyle but that in no way means I’m going to to toss out all my DVDs! There’s a lot of movies I’ve got on disc, and I like all of them. I love most of them, that’s why I bought them!
So…what’s the middle ground? The mute button, of course.
It’s hard for anyone to get away from advertisements - even a granola-crunching, public transport-using hippy wouldn’t be able to escape the adverts on buses, inside train cars and along the sides of bus and train stops. The only way to get away is to close your eyes - and you can escape advertising at him in the same way by just hitting the mute button between segments of your favorite show.
I know, this is a pretty simple tip, but one I re-learned recently to get away from the constant blathering of TV commercials.
Another plus: you don’t have to deal with lowering the volume when the advertisements come on, because advertisers or TV stations will often raise the volume of the adverts (this is illegal in Italy, by the way…that’s right, Italy, the country that elected a porn actress to parliament and is still in the grip of the mafia - showing you how far some countries have to go).
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