Sdtrk: ‘Another sun in my mouth’ by (unicorns)

As Irony is one of the fundamental forces of the Universe, I should open this entry with the fact that not only do I have a modest collection of vintage tie clips that represent various corporations (six, to date), but I absolutely loved Mad men! I even bought the Blu-ray boxset! The aforementioned irony stems from my dislike of corporations and my hatred of advertising, you see.

Adverts really seem to be the advertising industry justifying its own existence, if you think about it. Perhaps it’s just me and a shrinking handful of others, but if I’m interested in something, I’ll seek out my own information on it, rather than rely on an obviously-biased marketing team to tell me that it’s something I need in my life. Plus, they seem pushy… actually, adverts are pushy, as they’re trying to make a person spend money, to again, prop up commerce. Should I want further advice, I’ll seek out whatever website for whatever company that makes whatever product, but what I’m saying is: until that time comes, don’t bother me.
I can probably count on one hand how many times I’ve consciously clicked on an advert and bought something as a direct result of seeing one in, say, the past decade; off the top of my head, there’s the pair of readers that I bought two years ago, or this fantastic decal I’d seen mentioned on a post on Bluesky back in March.

Now it’s impossible for me to say I’m entirely impervious to marketing, which leads me to try to clarify what I define as advertising. Banner or sidebar adverts on websites, adverts on telly that air during what is supposed to be an uninterrupted film… things like that; those count. On the other hand, me actively visiting a site like Hidden Britain or the official Gerry Anderson page due to seeing a social media post wherein they say they have this or that on offer could be viewed as an advertisement, but I don’t think that qualifies, mainly as I’d made the decision to check on what they had, as opposed to acting on an unasked-for advert being beamed directly into my eyeballs. For clarity’s sake, adverts are defined here as ‘a corporation’s focussed attempt to coerce a person into spending money on goods or services when the person otherwise would not be interested in doing so’.
Right: so how is it that my Anti-Marketing Armour points are in the high thousands? Let’s break it down, shall we?

+ The main reason I’m generally against marketing is that 99% of the adverts I’m subjected to either aren’t offering me the sorts of things that I want to buy, as the things I do enjoy are either too old, obscure, or weird (complimentary), or the prices the sellers want are prohibitive. A good example would be how I’d love to own a vintage Rosita stereo Commander Luxus. Unfortunately, I’d have to sell my skeleton to buy one, that is, if I could even locate one. So in that scenario, it’s a case of running across something I passionately covet, but there’s no way I could afford it, which irritates me and brings me down. I don’t know about you, but I’m not keen on spending hours looking at things I’d love to buy and can’t afford; I think there are better uses of one’s time.
Another anti-marketing reason would be just not wanting to see adverts for products I will never have an interest in. Any AI-related bullshit. Sports nonsense (unless it’s for Detroit city FC). Nearly anything made by Nintendo. The list goes on. If I have zero interest in it, I shouldn’t have to look at it.
If we lived in a world where we’d have adverts on telly, or various websites, or the sides of buses, touting effects pedals, or companion Dolls, or bespoke neckties, I’d walk around all the time, nodding satisfactorily! But we don’t! We don’t.

+ Technically speaking, I’m buying solely for myself, and not an Organik partner, child, or pet. O, I’ll definitely tell you: my partners always want stuff, and due to the fact that they’re my partners, it’s my pleasure and duty to buy it for them, but they don’t keep up with trends or what’s ‘new’ and ‘hot’, either. So when I do purchase them various bits and bobs — if they haven’t already made off with my debit card and placed the order — it’s not something that happens that often

+ I’ve had the same car since 2017 which I love, and it was a year old when I bought it. Admittedly, the acceleration could use some oomph, but what am I gonna do, buy another car??
Full disclosure: shopping for general things is something I don’t mind, mostly as if I’ve left my place to go shopping for general things, I already know exactly what I want, so my ventures are tactical strikes. But I fucking hate auto shopping. My ideal for that process is that I Need A Car, I Go To A Dealer, The Very First Car I See Meets Every Single Requirement I Need, I Purchase It And Drive It Off The Lot That Day. There’s so many variables that it quickly turns from ‘let’s see what they’ve got’, to ‘fuck it, I’m really tired of looking, this one will do, I guess’. To me, it’s a lengthy process that’s much more involved than it should be, so I consider myself lucky to have a car I find to be aesthetically satisfying. Granted, it’s no pre-BMW MINI, but still

+ The lasses and I just moved back in Autumn of 2023 to Deafening silence Towers, which is the best place we’ll ever live in in this country, and I’ve already purchased about 98% of the things we need for our home. Admittedly, I’ve been saying ‘DS Towers is 98% complete’ for a wee bit over a year, and some purchases still get made now and again, but for the most part, it’s sorted

+ Coupled with the previous two things, I’m not one of those lunatics who feels the need to buy a new car or house every five to ten years. I’m sorry, that’s straight-up psychopathy. If you’re viewing every purchase you make as ‘an investment’ rather than something to use, love, or enjoy, there’s a massive hole in your personality that will never be filled

+ Thanks to the ongoing pandemic — and yes, coronavirus hasn’t gone away and is still a life-threatening illness, despite everyone wanting to believe otherwise — I don’t go anywhere. On top of that, with the current administration that the United states has been saddled with, frankly, I’m legitimately afraid of being detained upon returning to this country if I did go anywhere, despite being a US citizen since birth

+ For the first time in my life, I learned how to cook last year! Huzzah. So far, the only thing I know how to make with any degree of competence is sushi rice; the next recipe I have my sights on is zaru soba. Part of the reason I’ve just now taught myself how to cook at 52 years of age is down to me having a rather intense love/hate relationship with food. I’m dealing with allergies, food fear, my guts being a goddamned nightmare, being a picky eater, not being keen on food prep taking as long as it does for such a relatively short outcome — all of this is a separate post in and of itself — but food-related marketing is useless to me. I’ll occasionally see things that I don’t eat on a regular basis and think that they look reasonably tasty, but seconds later, I’ll come to the conclusion that ‘well, whatever that is, it likely won’t be in me for very long,’ consider it to be a waste of money, and move on

+ My sartorial sense has really not changed for over three decades, so clothes marketing is also ineffective, and the more arguably stylish clothes that I prefer used to be the top clobber down the Carnaby road back in 1967, like what geezers like this wore:

Normalise Men Wearing Suits Everywhere Again (and bring back proper scooters everywhere, too)

Personally, I’d love to get a couple of bespoke suits from proper tailors, but not only is that sort of service the opposite of inexpensive, but as mentioned, I don’t go anywhere where I could show it off

+ Despite companies doing their absolute damnedest to phase out physical media, I’m still very much invested in buying the stuff I want on Blu-ray, music Cd, or physical videogame disk. Really, it kinda doesn’t make sense to me that they’d do what they’re doing; clearly the current business model is attempting to force everyone to simply stream everything and own nothing, but you’d think that they’d also continue to manufacture physical media, in order to have something additional to sell to people. I’m fully aware that corporations are only concerned about Money Now, not Money Later, but ye gods.
What’s more, when I do buy physical media, whether it’s a film, or music, a videogame, or a book, I don’t buy every single thing that crosses my field of vision — as much of a fucking hipster term this is, I try to curate my libraries, so I’m not spending money on something, find I don’t like it enough to keep it, then have to go through the hassle of selling it or trading it in. That’s the one good thing I can say about streaming services… they allow people like me to watch whatever first, to see if it’s worth owning a copy. Of course, there’s other ways of sampling the booty, me hearties, yo ho ho, sixteen men on a dead man’s chest, avast, hook for a hand and a peg for a leg, but you didn’t hear that from me, yarrrr.

+ Speaking of books, I’ve culled most of my Amazon wishlists, as I’m weaning myself off their services, for obvious reasons. Up until last year, I’d had eight separate lists; now I’m down to just Books and Trade paperbacks, and with both of them nearly every selection I’m like ‘I want them, but do I need them?’ Either that, or some of the prices are completely divorced from reality.
My Trade paperbacks list is its own special kind of Hell, as it’s literally just Tank girl graphic novels. Ten of ’em. For some reason, there’s been quite a handful of reprints/reissues for Tank girl over the years, almost to the amount of the staggering number of Nurse with wound reissues. Therefore, I want to make sure whatever I buy is the most conclusive version, cos one of my biggest sins when I do buy stuff is double (or more) dipping. Ask me how many copies of ‘A clockwork orange’ I’ve had in my life! Hardcover, paperback, paperback, VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, steelbook Blu-ray. Where does it end??

+ If it wasn’t already painfully clear, I don’t follow popular trends. For one, no-one sensible has time to keep up with the constant changing of that shite, and for another, if you don’t already realise that most trends are engineered to make you buy crap and keep buying crap to chase an unattainable status forever and prop up an artificial sense of self-worth, then I’ve no idea what to tell you. As I’m the sort of bloke whose favourite thing in the world is probably consistency *gestures to blog, gestures to self* , novelty has very little appeal to me. Occasionally I don’t mind giving something new a go, but I’m most comfortable in doing/enjoying the same things over and over, as it gives me a sense of Order in a chaotic and unpredictable world. Ell oh ell.
Especially with clothes! My christ. As Empress Em once told me, ‘Style is a gift to others, while fashion screams that one is needy‘

+ One of the only qualities that I’ve (inadvertently) learned from my father, that I don’t really have an issue with, is frugality… why pay full price on something when you don’t have to?

+ I haven’t had a credit card for like two decades. I had a secured one once long ago, and when it came time to make my monthly payments, I just… didn’t. This resulted in me having a four-digit debt hanging over my head for years that, even when I had jobs, I felt I wasn’t able to pay. And interest rates are no laughing matter, as we all know. So one of the last things my mum did before she passed away was write me a cheque to settle the bill once and for all; she reasoned, quite rightly, that she’d have no use for money for much longer. As I’m older and ‘wiser’, I’ve no desire to potentially get myself into that situation ever again, which means I’ve not had a credit card in about two decades

+ I’m patently against the idea of constantly buying stuff that one doesn’t need, won’t use, and can barely afford in the first place (see: Trends). Retail therapy isn’t actual therapy

+ Apart from doing what I can to avoid spoilers in the media that I do consume, I don’t really experience FOMO. I’m fine with not seeing most things immediately when they debut; for example, I finally got round to seeing Mad men in its entirety a decade after it came out, and all of us here finally watched the original ‘Suspiria’ last April. My To Be Watched list stretches out into the far horizon, and I’m kinda trying prioritise things I’ve been wanting to see for years over things I’d like to see that recently made their debut. Unless we’re talking about David Croneberg’s ‘The shrouds‘; that gets ushered to the head of the queue.
Plus, oversaturation of various media makes me not want to see it. I had a mate who would constantly talk up this film or that series over and over, to the point where I no longer wanted to see whatever it was; or at the very least, my level of enthusiasm didn’t come close to theirs when I did watch it. Cos them repeatedly suggesting that I see this or that was basically an advert, and you’re learning right now about how I feel about adverts! Ell oh ell.

As previously stated, at no time will I ever say I HAVE ALL THAT I NEED, AND I NEED NOT MORE, AS I AM A SELF-CONTAINED COMPLETE AND TOTAL BEING. There’s always going to be something I wouldn’t mind having! Like maybe a couple more Dolls, as well as upgrade bodies for the Synthetik women who I already live with! Or a 1:1 scale replica of the Baseline test that was used in ‘Blade runner 2049’! Hell, looking at my wishlist on Thriftbooks alone causes me to shudder with apprehension. But there’s a crucial difference between having things in my life that I know I like — which, again, aren’t dictated by trends at all — and buying things that I don’t really need as a form of retail therapy. I personally know people who’ve repeatedly fallen into the trap of ooohh I want buy thing, specifically videogames, boardgames, books, or models, which they buy, and then they never touch them again. They’ve admitted that with their busy lifestyles, they don’t have the time in front of them to play/read/build their purchases, and while you could argue that maybe they’re buying things now to be able to interact with later, I feel that it’s more a case of the act of buying things floods their brains with dopamine to the point where they may not consider ‘when am I going to actually enjoy this??’ And I’ll fully admit that there’s a metric ton of books on our shelves here that I have yet to crack the spines on — I’d say my ratio of Read/Unread is about 60/40 — but books take up less space, they aren’t as expensive as boardgames or models, and there’s no building or having to buy tools to enjoy them. Again, if you’re curating the things you spend your hard-earned money on, I think you’ll get more value, as it were, out of what you have and can interact with regularly, as opposed to being surrounded by Things and repeatedly fiddling with a small number of the same things over and over, due to being hamstrung by indecision. Squeeze all the entertainment out of a thing you have, and then think about purchasing something new! I dunno. There’s a razor-thin line between Having and Hoarding.
‘I own all this stuff, but I barely do anything with it!’ You know who else said that?? Tutankhamun. And he had his brains pulled out through his nostrils with a hook. I think there’s a lesson there for all of us.

I’m old enough to remember walking through a mall, and dodging invididuals who were standing round with a pen and clipboard, attempting to corral customers into being part of a marketing survey for whatever silly merchandise whatever stupid company was trying to sell. What I’d love, especially at this stage of my life, is to have some overcaffeinated advertising genius try to get me to buy a product… partially I’m curious to see if they actually would have something that I’d be keen on, and partially to see their crestfallen faces as they eventually realise that I’m far too much of an outlier/pervert to effectively market to. Sell me a modernised, polyphonic version of an ARP Axxe! Or how about a Blu-ray boxset of the entirety of the Æon Flux animated series? Sell me a 1:1 scale remote-controlled Mandy animatronic! Sell me a coat! You just gotta crack the code, lads, you can do it! I believe in you!! (this is a lie)