President Elect Jake, From Snake Farm

It seems that the auto makers, auto insurance companies, fast food, and pharmaceutical company advertising campaigns have finally achieved the seemingly impossible mission of stupefying the American public into somnambulism — zombies that have one hand on their cell phones and their other hand on their wallets. The prevailing advertising strategies? The more stressed, stupid, and distracted you are, the more likely you are to impulse-buy a “professional grade” truck. “Buy this! No? How about some auto insurance?” “Would you like fries with your truck insurance? No? Well, okay, but will you just think about it for five minutes until I can remind you again?” You may have noticed that I like using questions as a literary device, so here’s another: How in the hell did this happen to us?

While we were multitasking, i.e., performing slap-and-tickle, half-assed work and playing Angry Birds while a dumpster fire singed our Constitution, the behemoth multinational corporations were busy assaulting our sensibilities with a shock-and-awe campaign. Deploying “Jake from State Farm,” “Flo from Progressive,” ” …and Doug” as the tip-of-the-spear storm troopers on a mission to stupefy the American public into commercial narcolepsy. Flooding the zone of our sensibilities is a trillion dollar continuous bombardment designed to stress, stupefy, and distract, and it seems to be working. If you don’t think so, just ask yourself:  Is “melty” a real word? Does the phrase “Nobody out-pizzas the Hut” make grammatical (or any other) sense? Anyway, why should this bother me?

Well, you might be okay with living in an ad-driven world or you might simply be irritated by it, but the unfortunate fact is that your media, news, movies, streaming video — all of it — is paid for by advertising revenue from the corporations; therefore, it’s the advertising money that ultimately determines what content your media shows you (or doesn’t show you). Mull that one over and consider what the corporate media will do with self-learning artificial intelligence machines writing algorithms using conditional inferential statistical analysis of a vast database universe that includes the intimate personal details of every person on the planet, right down to the psychological profiles of every living person who ever clicked a keyboard or used a phone. Even the Kalahari Bushman’s daughter? Yep, her too. Combine this mischief with deep-fake technology, and you’ve got to be wondering what’s going to happen next.

I’m just spit-balling here. Guessing, really, but I suspect you and I are not going to like what comes next. Today, it’s irritating “targeted advertisements” you can supposedly opt out of; tomorrow, we may all find ourselves streaming the latest episode of “Meet the Leader!” on our phones over the One World Corporation Premium Channel. You won’t be able to opt out of meeting the leader, but you’ll always have your phone with you because it will be your driver’s license; hold your credit cards; house your financial and banking apps; your bio metric credentials; your national identity card and, in short, everything else you need to function. Unfortunately your phone won’t work until you acknowledge the “Leader’s Daily Message,” but after you watch it and click the check box …well, consume away, my friend!