Ads, Ads and Even More Ads



“My favorite part about watching YouTube videos is getting interrupted by ads, especially the ones you can’t skip” said no one ever! It’s ridiculous how surrounded we are by advertisements. And although we complain about it, it’s something that, half the time, many of us do not actually even notice, as we have grown up with it. I mean think about it, everywhere we look there’s some sort of logo or some company trying to sell us something. Whether we are trying to watch something on TV or we are walking through a city, advertisements are everywhere. And this is something no one, at least living in the U.S., can deny. We all know the slogans for restaurants and jingles for car insurances and products. If you think you don't, click here to prove you wrong. Woah, is this an ad? It’s inevitable.

In the book, Feed by M. T. Anderson, our annoying commercialization is taken to a whole other level. The people of this book have what’s called the feed installed into their brains, which is basically a microchip with the internet inside. Although that may sound great as it takes having the internet at your fingertips to an extreme, ads appear in there too. Yea, inside their heads. No escape for sure.

Have you ever noticed that the things you search for on different websites, later appear as ads on places like Facebook and Twitter? This is something pretty simple, but I had actually never realized it until one of my Amazon searches appeared to me on social media. The same thing happens to the people in Feed, except they don’t even have to search for it! Just them looking at it and expressing some sort of interest in the product, gets them similar products and prices recommended to them. It’s crazy. Towards the end of the book, as one of the main characters, Violet, is close to dying, the feed starts recommending different types of funeral music.

“…she’d noticed all of the requiem masses I’d been listening to. She suggested some others.” (p. 262).

When I read this,
all I could think of was that it had gone a little too far for me. It definitely isn’t too far off from what we encounter now. These algorithms our searches create are just used to get us to buy anything and everything- even if it is the music that will be playing at your burial.

I don’t think any of us can imagine a time and place where advertisements are non-existent. Or even no brands existing, because we’ve grown up with it. And we are so heavily surrounded by them, we don’t even realize it. To me what’s craziest is that, who says we won’t get to this level of commercialization that is shown in Feed with how fast technology is advancing and how much we rely on it? That we’d reach the point of having ads playing inside of our heads, interrupting our conversations, and thought processes. But then again… who says we haven’t reached this point already? 

Kelsey C. Words: 493

Work Cited
Anderson, M. T. Feed. Candlewick Press 2002.

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