By Don Hall

Yeah, the headline is a bit hyperbolic, but a man can dream big, right?

The preamble goes something like this—when I was a kid (oh, fuck. Grandpa is waxing on about the ‘80s again) there were plenty of opportunities to check out, let the entertainment options wash over you, and become a bit of a mindless zombie. I'd sit in front of the television a couple of hours a day. There were designated times for the Boob Tube because we received the three channels available for free and we had to adhere to the TV Guide roster in order to see the shows we loved.

Even way back then, the thing that bugged the living shit out of me were all the ads. Watching Alex Haley's Roots in 1977 was a truly transcendent experience. For the first time in my life, I was immersed in the story of slavery in America in a way that forced empathy and understanding. Except that every twenty-two minutes, the generational narrative of black America was interrupted by a woman in a pantsuit telling you earnestly about the delicious smoothness of Michelob® and balding football stars extolling the virtues of Right Guard®. Then back to the brutality of Chattel Slavery®!

Then came cable television and a subscriber model. In 1975 there were 3,500 cable systems serving 10 million subscribers, and within a decade these numbers jumped to 6,600 systems serving nearly 40 million subscribers. The increase in cable TV subscribers encouraged a number of independent business people to begin new cable networks. Cable networks grew from 28 in 1980 to 79 in 1990. These new networks no longer simply delivered programs that aired on the broadcast networks. Instead, they came up with unique programs, often targeted toward specific, narrow audience groups.

No longer was the fly fishing enthusiast limited to watching episodes of Cheers at 7 p.m. on Thursdays. He could install his Volkswagen-sized satellite dish in his yard and watch hours of programming designed for he and people with his same specific interest level. Best of all, no commercials. No advertising. He could enjoy a show about the use of feathered lures and heavy line in various waters without being shilled to buy things he didn't need or want. It felt like freedom of both choice and away from the noise of incessant commerce hawking its wares and invading his attention.

Jumpcut to 2022. The streaming platforms received a vital shot in the arm during the pandemic but they were pervasive and overwhelming even before. The sheer amount of commercial-free entertainment, winnowed down to appeal to the interests of smaller and smaller groups of people, is overwhelming. Binge-watching, an idea that was inconceivable in those halcyon days of the the ‘80s, is now the default. I'm not throwing shade at this development—I spend far too much time watching things on screens both large and small almost pathologically. I pay approximately eighty bucks a month to have my own plethora of programs and films to choose from and listen to podcasts on the regular. My Zoomer niece spends hours a day watching Tik Tok videos.

We are addicted. We are exactly where they want us.

I spent a year working remotely for a company designed to sell companies your online data so that those companies could then target advertising directly to you. Trust me, it's a disgusting business. The things we find ourselves doing in order to simply maintain a lifestyle can be grotesque and depressing. The things we do to make a fucking buck are a stain, but the people who spend millions to advertise bullshit to us are beyond help.

By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing… kill yourself. It’s just a little thought; I’m just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day they’ll take root—I don’t know. You try, you do what you can.

(Kill yourself.)

Seriously though, if you are, do.

Aaah, no really. There’s no rationalization for what you do and you are Satan’s little helpers. Okay—kill yourself.

Seriously. You are the ruiner of all things good.

Seriously. No this is not a joke. You’re [going], “There’s going to be a joke coming.” There’s no fucking joke coming. You are Satan’s spawn filling the world with bile and garbage. You are fucked and you are fucking us. Kill yourself. It’s the only way to save your fucking soul. Kill yourself

Planting seeds.

I know all the marketing people are going, “He’s doing a joke…” There’s no joke here whatsoever. Suck a tail-pipe, fucking hang yourself, borrow a gun from a Yank friend—I don’t care how you do it. Rid the world of your evil fucking machinations. (Machi…) Whatever, you know what I mean.

I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too: “Oh, you know what Bill’s doing? He’s going for that anti-marketing dollar. That’s a good market. He’s very smart.”

Oh man, I am not doing that, you fucking, evil scumbags!

“Ooh, you know what Bill’s doing now? He’s going for the righteous indignation dollar. That’s a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling that indignation. We’ve done research—huge market. He’s doing a good thing.”

Godammit, I’m not doing that, you scum-bags! Quit putting a goddamn dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet.

“Ooh, the anger dollar. Huge. Huge in times of recession. Giant market. Bill’s very bright to do that.”

God, I’m just caught in a fucking web.

“Ooh, the trapped dollar, big dollar, huge dollar. Good market—look at our research. We see that many people feel trapped. If we play to that and then separate them into the trapped dollar…”

How do you live like that? And I bet you sleep like fucking babies at night, don’t you?

“What didya do today, honey?”

“Oh, we made ah, we made ah arsenic a childhood food now, goodnight.” [snores] “Yeah we just said, you know, is your baby really too loud? You know?” [snores] “Yeah, you know the mums will love it.” [snores]

Sleep like fucking children, don’t ya. This is your world, isn’t it?

Bill Hicks

Hicks performed this routine long before smartphones became the heroin of the mainstream. Decades before the technology to tether us to the trough of commerce and marketing was small enough to fit in our back pocket. He was dead right then. He is dead right now. I mean, he is dead and he is right.

Now, after years of commercial-free soma, the streaming giants are planning on adding commercials to the endless parade, the cacophony of options, in order to add revenue to their bottom line. They expect the addicted masses to pay for that which we are pumping into our brains and pay more for the privilege of opening the door for corporations to shill their bullshit before, during, and after episodes of House of the Dragon.

Maybe one difference between the GenX and all generations that follow is that we can remember, vaguely as if in a fever dream, a time before the streaming, Tik Toking, Instagramming, Huluing, Netflixing of America. We can recall a time when we could choose to turn it all off and go outside and huff glue in a paper bag on the corner of a parking lot behind a mall. We can remember arcades and playgrounds. We can ruminate on switching off.

My hope is that the GenXers will lead the way. Unsubscribe from all of it. My hope is that the corporations double down on more and more ads and we all simply refuse to play, deny them the opportunity to drink their delicious multi-flavored Kool-Aid and endure the co-opting of our minds to allow human greedworms to flood us with their bullshit.

It's the only road to salvation, gang.

Now, I have to binge all my shows before I crawl into my hole and relearn to read.