Advertising overload
A Netherlands arts group, Studio Smack, put together this video which provides a stark look at all the logos and advertising one is exposed to going throughout a normal daily routine.
A Netherlands arts group, Studio Smack, put together this video which provides a stark look at all the logos and advertising one is exposed to going throughout a normal daily routine.
At Rolling Stone, Tim Dickinson has written a terrific in-depth article on how Roger Ailes built the Fox News Fear Factory. The title is, "The Fox News Fear Factory." As part of that long article, Dickinson cites some interesting stats. The topic is "Who watches Fox News?" And here's the answer:
Ailes knows exactly who is watching Fox News each day, and he is adept at playing to their darkest fears in the age of Obama. The network’s viewers are old, with a median age of 65: Ads cater to the immobile, the infirm and the incontinent, with appeals to join class action hip-replacement lawsuits, spots for products like Colon Flow and testimonials for the services of Liberator Medical (“Liberator gave me back the freedom I haven’t had since I started using catheters”). The audience is also almost exclusively white – only 1.38 percent of viewers are African-American. “Roger understands audiences,” says Rollins, the former Reagan consultant. “He knew how to target, which is what Fox News is all about.” The typical viewer of Hannity, to take the most stark example, is a pro-business (86 percent), Christian conservative (78 percent), Tea Party-backer (75 percent) with no college degree (66 percent), who is over age 50 (65 percent), supports the NRA (73 percent), doesn’t back gay rights (78 percent) and thinks government “does too much” (84 percent). “He’s got a niche audience and he’s programmed to it beautifully,” says a former News Corp. colleague. “He feeds them exactly what they want to hear.”Dickenson's conclusions is also astounding. Not too many years ago, conservative politicians believed that Fox News was a tool of the conservative politicians. That might have flipped. Now it appears that the conservative politicians are tools of Fox News. Democracy in action, some would say.
I spotted this article on Reddit.com today. The little Vietnamese girl who was photographed running, terrified, naked and burned from the napalm attack recovered, grew up to become a doctor and is now living in Canada. She has lived quite an interesting life.
To put this topic in perspective, think of the terrible old banker, Mr. Potter, featured in the Christmas classic, "It’s a Wonderful Life." Mr. Potter drove a very hard bargain, but he wanted customers to actually pay off their loans. Keep in mind that Mr. Potter was lending out money at about 2%. If Mr. Potter could have charge as much as many credit card companies, he would want to stretch out his repayment plans. And if he could charge 500%, he might not actually ever want his loans to be repaid. Welcome to the world of payday lending. During the day I work as a consumer lawyer at the Simon Law Firm in St. Louis, Missouri. My firm has filed several class actions again payday lenders based on their outrageous lending practices--on many occasions they systematically ignore the weak state laws that ostensibly regulate their conduct. At my firm, we've met undeniable facts demonstrating that payday lenders make most of their money from people they would term "repeat customers," but these people should more accurately be referred to as people who are trapped in high interest loans or 400% or even 500% interest.
I don't want it to seem like I'm obsessed with wedding proposals going awry, but this one, which I spotted at FailBlog must win some sort of award: