Just Be And You Are

We've become immune to watching commercials and maybe that's why advertisers are working so hard to keep our attention. Probably because I don't watch much TV (ok, hulu selectively), whenever I watch a commercial my mind is thrown in ten different directions. It's an experience and only when I see myself watching it can I step out, and recollect my brain. The plethora of audio-visual stimuli in a commercial is meant to do only one thing; keep your eyes on the screen. We all know it's to sell us stuff and I don't think most of us buy into it. What we buy into instead is a well-staged glamorization of reality. Reality. You know, slow-moving birds, waving trees, smell of the air, feel of the pavement, all that jazz. Just isn't as exotic and glitzy as TV. After a few hours a day (which is below the national average), we're overstimulated to the point where regular old life seems, well, regular and we have go back for more. It's like opening a Doritos bag. The best way to realize the inanity of what you're experiencing is to step out of yourself for a second and think about you sitting there watching this commercial and absorbing what it has to offer. Your transfixiation becomes immediately clear and you might find yourself shaking your head and getting some water. Or just getting up. Have you ever watched people playing video games (especially the Wii)? They're so caught up in the screen that they don't realize they're pressing a few buttons really fast or waving a joystick around madly. It's really funny to watch and makes me think about what they're really doing; entertaining themselves. View yourself the same way watching a commercial and you're realize what you're really doing too. Mainly, I want to jump out of the jaded reality of marketing and focus on what I really wanted in the first place - to watch a show and be entertained. Commercials have been a bother since day one, and thanks to TiVo and web streaming, they're becoming less of a nuisance. If you watch TV the traditional way, try doing something else when the commercial comes on. Being sedentary is one of the major culprits in the obesity epidemic racing through America and no one wants to be part of that statistic. Getting up alone would do just to stretch the legs but my personal favorite is squeezing in a few pushups or situps. TV just became interactive.