[Elspode]

The problem is that *everything* is now a legitimate venue for advertising. At the movies, you used to get a newsreel, two cartoons and a feature film. The trailers were advertising, sure, but I *like* knowing what films are coming out down the road. Anticipation can be fun.

Nowadays, you pay $8 - $12 to get into a theater, and you are bombarded with advertising from the moment you pass through the doors. Does anyone remember anymore that the movie screen used to be blank - often covered by curtains - until the trailers started up? Then some bright boy decided that anyone sitting in a theater seat was a potential consumer, and now you see ads right up to the beginning of the feature. Then, you see product placement *in* the feature. There are ads in bathroom stalls and *in* urinals, on vehicles, stitched onto people's clothes to sell more clothes, printed on magnets stuck to your refrigerator and printed on little pieces of paper stuck into your box of cereal. Hell, there have even been a couple of attempts to initiate space-borne advertising by orbiting gigantic display devices of varying descriptions so that you cannot even look at the stars without thinking of Coca-Cola or Viagra.

Andy Warhol had it right when he portrayed Campbells soup cans as artworks...the line between art and consumerism has been totally erased. Humanity has been reduced to consumers by people whose only purpose in life is to move money from your pockets to theirs.