Big Brother is Watching You

We've all heard the people who stand on the street corner ranting about how our privacy basically obliterated. How the government can find out our 1st grade crush with the click of a mouse. How anything you say or do can and will be used against you if necessary. Then, of course, he whips out his iPhone and changes his Facebook status to "On the corner of Granville and Robson... come out and hear about how the gov

ernment is stealing our privacy!

Right. We live in the 21st century. Privacy is basically non-existent. And as our every increasing use of Facebook, Twitter, and blogs show, we are totally fine with exposing everything from the most mundane details of our daily life to deepest secrets most people wouldn't even tell their best friend.

And marketing is completely latching on to the "no privacy" ideal. Now, whenever you browse the internet, ads are customized based on your browsing history on the computer your location, your personal information in Facebook, or the content of your e-mail. And this sort of "Big Brother" ideal is moving on to print advertising as well. This is a report on Adland about a new Japanese billboard that truly is Big Brother-esque... and a little bit creepy.

I'm not encouraging apathy about this sort of thing, but there really is nothing we can do to gain back the false security of "privacy". Even if by some miracle internet and technology are totally destroyed by an all-consuming nano-virus, there will still be documentation filed away in a dusty corner of some government basement about every blog rant you posted in the last 5 years. We just need to accept the fact that privacy is completely dead. Now we just need to spread the word to the people ranting on the street corner. Really, preaching to the masses is so 20th century.... that's what blogs are for!

9/11 is still not funny

It's a generally accepted fact in popular culture that anything becomes fair game for jokes after ten years. Very few tragic events from the past are exempt from becoming laughing stock amongst today's always-tactful youth.

Unfortunately, this ad for a French magazine comes in at a solid 9 years and 8 days after the 9/11 attacks, which makes it still very unfunny. I don't know if the people working at the ad agency are so blissfully removed from popular culture that they are unaware of this rule, or if France doesn't follow the same set of rules that dictate our lives in North America, but this is one very dark mark against a country that prides itself on being full of cultured, refined, and proud people.

Seeing how this ad is neither cultured nor refined, I would say the French populace is sliding down a slippery slope to becoming inconsiderate maniacs like the rest of the world. Of course, although France is often at the receiving end of countless jokes,I doubt many Americans would consider cracking a joke about 9/11 if the planes had flown instead into the Eiffel Tower. Come next September, of course, everything will be fair game.

But for now, I think it is safe to say that this ad, although it certainly grabs your attention, is not doing anything to boast the readership of this magazine. Personally, I don't care if they have an article stating the winning lottery numbers for the next year. I am not reading this magazine. And hopefully the rest of the populace feels the same way.

As a side note, awesome chart about wants versus needs