Selling A Pelican A Cell Phone

Watching Mad Men is to watch a world of illusion and images, pretense and affectation, a polished surface above . . . what? They are constantly looking for ways to sell things: cigarettes, lipstick, Nixon, themselves. The irony is delicious, seeing the characters dismiss John F. Kennedy as a threat to Nixon; as a modern audience, we know of the effect that the camera and television had on that campaign.

But I don't know that our world is any different than theirs. We're always looking to sell . . . stuff. Advertising is ubiquitous, in sometimes hilarious ways.

Look at this article from www.sfgate.com. It's an article about a pelican that swallowed a cell phone. The article is sponsored by Verizon Wireless. The first line of the article is even "Can you hear me now?" That's just perfect absurdity.

In the magazine Travel And Leisure, published by American Express and which is a recent discovery I love for the travel essays, there was a feature touting a computer case stylized to look like a world map. They said in evident sincerity that every serious traveler needed one.

Another example: my blogspot account offers the chance to earn money through AdSense, a Google tool to post advertisements on my blogs, linked to keywords in the text. It would be possible to have some fun with that, I would think, by seeing just what sort of obscure/obscene/conflicting ads popped up. I have to admit that I was tempted to try it out, because I would love to make money by writing, but I would feel kind of cheap and dirty, which might make it hard for me to write professionally, I suppose. Plus, I realized it would be another ThemeStream, because I'd be writing for clicks, rather than my own satisfaction.

Let me clarify: ThemeStream, for those of you whom I didn't meet on the site--which is a smaller percentage than you might expect, not even counting my mom, whom I met prior to ThemeStream--was a site where you could write something and be paid based on the number of views you received. Needless to say, that pay structure didn't last long, and the site folded. The problem with it, for the people who ran the site, at least, was that you would get networks of writers who would subscribe and follow each other's writing, which would inflate the number of views each person got. Great for the writers--great for me, getting to meet some wonderful personalities and talents--not so great for the people running the site.

My point is, I made some money from that site, but I wasn't really selling anything of value, and I think that is the problem I have with advertising, and specifically, with advertising on my blog. I would feel fraudulent and sleazy.

I think this is also why we have such a negative feeling in this country towards advertising, used car sales, politics, etc. We always think that someone is trying to sell us something. They are, of course. And for some reason, even though we know they are selling to us, it works, which makes us cynical and grumpy.

Wouldn't it, perhaps, be better if we all accepted that we're all selling something? Then we could get on with evaluating exactly what is being sold. It sounds a lot more fun to me, because it's not like advertising is going away anytime soon.

Besides, it looks like so much FUN on Mad Men. You know, minus the misogyny.