Ads. Ads everywhere.
Look at your phone. Ads. Turn on a television. Ads. Open a laptop. Ads. Scroll social media to make sure cherished friends and loved ones are still alive and actively posting angry political memes. Ads.
Get in your vehicle, turn on the radio. Ads. Stop at a gas station; a video screen is embedded in your gas pump. Ads.
If you ask me, the TV commercials are the worst. The ordinary American sees roughly 200 TV commercials per day. Most of these commercials are advertising medications. Your average American streaming channel airs 80 prescription drug commercials EVERY HOUR.
Drug commercials have no aesthetic or emotional value. They have become their own clichéd advertising subgenre. Nobody likes them, everyone makes fun of them, and yet they persist. Sort of like Congress.
What’s worse, the commercials are all the same. Common pharmaceutical commercial tropes include:
The prototypical late-middle-aged male, wearing jeans and Carhartt, walking through a cornfield, talking sincerely about hemorrhoids.
Or the sad woman, mid-40 to early-60s, gazing out a window. Usually, she is talking about depression medication with an sci-fi-sounding name such as, say, “Xenios.”
Meantime, a fast-paced, highly motivational, Tony Robbins-style narrator saying (a) “Take control of your life, and ask your doctor about Xenios,” and (b) “Xenios causes suicidal thoughts.”
No sooner has the announcer said all this, than the announcer begins blatantly telling you NOT to take Xenios. The announcer specifically uses those words: “DO NOT TAKE XENIOS…”
“DO NOT TAKE XENIOS if you are allergic to eggs or flu vaccinations; DO NOT TAKE XENIOS if you are pregnant; DO NOT TAKE XENIOS if you have ever been pregnant, or known anyone who has ever been pregnant; DO NOT TAKE XENIOS if you have never taken XENIOS.”
Yes, ads are a part of life. We don’t even notice them anymore. They never stop. They are loud. Numerous. And they all want something from you. They are soulless. Wholly devoid of self-awareness. Bad actors. Bright colors. Empty guarantees.
And worse, the onslaught of various advertisements have no unifying theme. They are like random neural firings from a Great Commercial Consciousness, bombarding you.
Except, the ads aren’t like bombs. Instead, they creep, like tiny aggressive worms, burrowing into your frontal lobe, chewing their way into your current state of awareness.
And the worms stay there. Their product names forever become part of your brainmatter. How else can you explain being able to remember all those ridiculous commercials from childhood?
“Ladies, please, don’t squeeze the Charmin!”
“It’s Shake ‘N’ Bake, and I helped!”
And, lest we forget, the tiny unfortunate Ty-D-Bol man rowboating through a toilet bowl without a HAZMAT suit.
We are a nation of ads. We have 700,000 interstate billboards. We have a sign every 12 feet in America. We also wear more advertisements than any nation on Earth. The average American wears three to five brand-logo ads per day.
And, according to the internet, an ordinary American is exposed to 5,000 to 10,000 ads every day.
Ten thousand ads? I can’t fathom this number being accurate. It seems absurd to think we see this many on a daily basis.
Then again, maybe it’s not unreasonable. Not when you consider an ordinary American spends a daily total of 8 to 13 hours in front of a screen. Which is depressing when you think about it.
But don’t be depressed. Namely, because I bring all this up for a very important reason. I want to share some exciting news that could change your life forever. You don’t have to be depressed.
Take control of your life and ask your doctor today about Xenios…