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We've all seen the public service TV ads that go much further than most ads could get away with - people getting physically crippled in car accidents (or pub table accidents), nasty fatty goo squeezed from arteries and all the others on the theme - violence and gore with abandon, in the name of saving lives.
Today I saw a new one:
Guy hits on a pretty girl in a pub, she's feeling it, suddenly he pulls away, makes his excuses and leaves.
Cut to the girl with a cigarette and the message - "If you smoke, you stink".
When it was graphic violence and gore, I was surprised how far they were going, but it seemed acceptable given the message.
As soon as it gets personal, I find myself starting to reconsider.
We're not giving people a hard-hitting message that forces them to accept the dangers of smoking to their own health and others'.
We're not providing compelling life-saving information about in a hard-hitting format.
This is all about making people feel social shame. Making them feel socially rejected, objects of disgust, people so unpleasant everyone else will try to avoid them.
This just seems like victimisation.
If people aren't harming other through passive smoking, and they realise the health issues, they have the right to smoke if they want to. Civil liberties, as the law in this country has defined them.
Ram the health message down peoples' throats, in an emotive 'sit up and listen' way designed to make sure it hits home. It forces them to understand the consequences to their health.
But cheap personal shots designed to chasitse and humiliate smokers? Isn't that just below the belt.
We're not talking about education or information any more. We're talking about trying to manipulate, through shame and fear, people into compliance with how certain individuals have decided we should live our lives.
Those people can go to hell.
But wait!
Isn't that what pretty much *any* TV ad is all about - trying to coerce and manipulate someone into compliance to buy a specific product or service?
Yes. But can they go so far as to shame and ostracise the non-compliant - to do so in such a direct, explicit and personal way?
I don't think they'd get away with it.
But isn't this one justified on the grounds that it's for peoples' health?
It may be distinct from the previous public service ads by its commmercial use of manipulation, but it's the same as normal commercial ads. Only taken much further.
And isn't going much further justified by all the lives it'll save?
Or are we back to trying to powerfully shame and manipulate people out of engaging in one of their civil liberties?
We don't have the 'right' to stop them damaging their health like this if they choose to do so.
But if it's normal for commercials to try to manipulate people out of engaging in their civil liberties, say the liberty not to buy product X, then is this ad so different?
What do you make of it all?
[I'm a non-smoker]
Today I saw a new one:
Guy hits on a pretty girl in a pub, she's feeling it, suddenly he pulls away, makes his excuses and leaves.
Cut to the girl with a cigarette and the message - "If you smoke, you stink".
When it was graphic violence and gore, I was surprised how far they were going, but it seemed acceptable given the message.
As soon as it gets personal, I find myself starting to reconsider.
We're not giving people a hard-hitting message that forces them to accept the dangers of smoking to their own health and others'.
We're not providing compelling life-saving information about in a hard-hitting format.
This is all about making people feel social shame. Making them feel socially rejected, objects of disgust, people so unpleasant everyone else will try to avoid them.
This just seems like victimisation.
If people aren't harming other through passive smoking, and they realise the health issues, they have the right to smoke if they want to. Civil liberties, as the law in this country has defined them.
Ram the health message down peoples' throats, in an emotive 'sit up and listen' way designed to make sure it hits home. It forces them to understand the consequences to their health.
But cheap personal shots designed to chasitse and humiliate smokers? Isn't that just below the belt.
We're not talking about education or information any more. We're talking about trying to manipulate, through shame and fear, people into compliance with how certain individuals have decided we should live our lives.
Those people can go to hell.
But wait!
Isn't that what pretty much *any* TV ad is all about - trying to coerce and manipulate someone into compliance to buy a specific product or service?
Yes. But can they go so far as to shame and ostracise the non-compliant - to do so in such a direct, explicit and personal way?
I don't think they'd get away with it.
But isn't this one justified on the grounds that it's for peoples' health?
It may be distinct from the previous public service ads by its commmercial use of manipulation, but it's the same as normal commercial ads. Only taken much further.
And isn't going much further justified by all the lives it'll save?
Or are we back to trying to powerfully shame and manipulate people out of engaging in one of their civil liberties?
We don't have the 'right' to stop them damaging their health like this if they choose to do so.
But if it's normal for commercials to try to manipulate people out of engaging in their civil liberties, say the liberty not to buy product X, then is this ad so different?
What do you make of it all?
[I'm a non-smoker]
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It does crap on the 'evil greedy taxing government' bull that a lot of people who get carried away by their politics tend to gravitate to.
It's nice that occasionally there's something to restore a sembalance of moderation to peoples' views.
It's nice that occasionally there's something to restore a sembalance of moderation to peoples' views.
Smoking for lower birthrate.
I'd heard similar stuff before.
I feel concerned at the ease with which people can have kids. You hear about people doing stuff like this, and having kids to secure themselves a soft life on benefits. (It may be far from a life of luxury, but it's a safe way out, easier than actually standing on your own feet, and most of all is a financial burden on everybody else).
Obviously preventing people from having kids isn't good either!
It's a very difficult situation - you can't refuse financial help to the mother without penalising the baby.
But you don't want to reward her or encourage others.
Plus - and this might be my Daily-Mail-esque paranoia coming into play - the comparative birth rates play on my mind.
'Normal' people are waiting until later in life to have babies.
Teen mothers are knocking out more kids and from an earlier age.
The population is becoming lop-sided towards single-mother-chavsville.
Woah! That's not PC. But the statistics are pretty sound.
There are increasing numbers of single working class mothers, and their children are statistically **much** more likely to be criminals, volent offenders, and the vile lowlives that make everyone else unhappy.
Has anyone read Steven Levitt's Freakonomics?
Incredible book, I'd recommend it.
It the book, as one of many adventures in weird applications of principles of economics, Levitt shows how the sudden fall in the crime-boom in America in the late 90s was attributable to the legalisation of abortion 15-20 years earlier.
Essentially, young teenage mothers, whose kids were most likely to become criminals, didn't have to have their babies. Those babies didn't grow up to be lowlives, and a generation of criminals was 'prevented'.
(All of which doesn't mean that any one such baby is very *likely* to become a junkie mugger killer, just that they're much more likely to become one than the average baby.)
If we're going through the opposite of what America experienced 20-30 years ago, what does that mean for our future?
But it's a very difficult issue to handle.
I'd heard similar stuff before.
I feel concerned at the ease with which people can have kids. You hear about people doing stuff like this, and having kids to secure themselves a soft life on benefits. (It may be far from a life of luxury, but it's a safe way out, easier than actually standing on your own feet, and most of all is a financial burden on everybody else).
Obviously preventing people from having kids isn't good either!
It's a very difficult situation - you can't refuse financial help to the mother without penalising the baby.
But you don't want to reward her or encourage others.
Plus - and this might be my Daily-Mail-esque paranoia coming into play - the comparative birth rates play on my mind.
'Normal' people are waiting until later in life to have babies.
Teen mothers are knocking out more kids and from an earlier age.
The population is becoming lop-sided towards single-mother-chavsville.
Woah! That's not PC. But the statistics are pretty sound.
There are increasing numbers of single working class mothers, and their children are statistically **much** more likely to be criminals, volent offenders, and the vile lowlives that make everyone else unhappy.
Has anyone read Steven Levitt's Freakonomics?
Incredible book, I'd recommend it.
It the book, as one of many adventures in weird applications of principles of economics, Levitt shows how the sudden fall in the crime-boom in America in the late 90s was attributable to the legalisation of abortion 15-20 years earlier.
Essentially, young teenage mothers, whose kids were most likely to become criminals, didn't have to have their babies. Those babies didn't grow up to be lowlives, and a generation of criminals was 'prevented'.
(All of which doesn't mean that any one such baby is very *likely* to become a junkie mugger killer, just that they're much more likely to become one than the average baby.)
If we're going through the opposite of what America experienced 20-30 years ago, what does that mean for our future?
But it's a very difficult issue to handle.
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