I was watching the tennis as an ad was repeatedly served to me. It comprised of a white void, dressed with smacks of colourful smoke. The ad posed an odd question. The answer it provided took the form of a mass-produced, moulded drink bottle for children.

The next day, I was cycling my emails. I had to find the word ‘unsubscribe’, which had been buried in a drastically reduced font.

The process was not straightforward. A dialogue occurred. Someone, or some … thing, had taken time out from its frenetic non-existence to speak with me directly. It seemed I had upset it somehow.

2025, baby.
Pillow-talk with products.

Get into bed with consumerism and make money your god.
Buy things like religion. Shake hands with the factory. Unboxing rituals, amassed possessions and the barcode blood rush of Not Missing Out.

Would monkeys do this to themselves? Harass each other with increasingly brash fixtures about which bananas are the sweetest, healthiest and most likely to enhance their chances of sourcing a mate? Advertising has infiltrated almost every last vestige of what being a human is.

In Star Trek, the ultimate poster model for a future society, I don’t see much branding going on. No one is an influencer – the professional job title we have created to replace 2010’s more knowing ‘famous for being famous.’

WHAT DOES $5 FEEL LIKE?

It’s a tagline so disturbingly evocative, it’s gotten under my skin. I am now writing about it, which is the primary objective of any ad: to attach itself to an engaged host and retransmit. A virus of an idea feeding on imagination.

Why does it matter? Isn’t it a bit of harmless fun? A spot of retail therapy in a potentially harrowing year of caring for a person with a disability or living with chronic pain?

I suppose. But… I don’t want five dollars to feel like anything.

I want a poem to feel like something (even though poetry makes me numb). I want a butterfly, a song or a painting to feel like something.

Advertising is filling all the spaces where art used to live. Art exists to tell human stories and enhance emotional capital. Advertising zeroes in to sell products and dam rivers of wealth.

WE’RE SORRY TO SEE YOU GO!

Manipulative words from a faceless company designed to coerce my nameless feelings of doubt and guilt.

Wait! Maybe I’m making a mistake. Perhaps this brand was ‘the one.’

Maybe I’ll miss out on something; a Sliding Doors moment where I’m compromising my future self’s window of prosperity by turning a cold shoulder on the aggrieved message, which is arguably targeting more emotional intimacy towards me than several close friends with kids have all year.

The auto-reply is self-aware. It has feelings. Feelings for me. Hurt feelings.

Perhaps, this is what five dollars feels like; approximately the amount of money I would invest in an email client that could successfully identify such corporate scams of the heart and send them kicking and screaming back through the black jellied tunnels of my fucking junk folder.

I feel enough.

I feel too much.

I don’t feel enough.

I am human and colourful and shifting and furious. My intelligence keeps a Lamborghini running and an electric sword as sharp as the heavens. I slice through the cultural veneer with dashing aplomb and an otherworldly sense of vengeance.

The enemy, unseen, falls prey to the cosmic avalanche of love and hope in my eyes.

There is a loneliness epidemic. Left by themselves, humans will buy things online. There are memes about not being able to feel at ease unless there is a package on the way.

I get it. I really do. I can make a real mess of my savings account on the eBay app.

I want to see ads for groups that encourage isolated people to get together. A “Jmart” social club I’d accept. We could meet for a cut lunch in a caravan park games room. There could be multi-coloured incense and refillable stainless steel drink bottles. We could chat about the dream we had last night and the first album we bought with our own money. After a walk to get ice cream, we would say goodbye to a new friend or two.

I would be sorry to see them go.
It would feel priceless.

This was written for the monthly BMA column Struth Be Told. You can read other columns I’ve written this year here.

Check out my latest podcast for ABC Conversations.

And be sure to peruse my Dream Burnie book which was released in February.