"I'm My Own Person" and Other Lies We Tell Ourselves

I used to teach mass media to high school students and it never surprised me when most of them, when asked, thought that advertising (and pop culture in general) had little to no influence on them. Adults, quite often, tell themselves the same thing.

If advertising didn't work, however, it wouldn't exist. Those billions spent would be wasted money--which isn't to say that all advertising works all the time--it doesn't.

An old acquaintance was on Facebook asking about getting a tattoo. I replied that the response was merely bandwagoning--tattoos have been so mainstreamed that many who have them now are the same people thirty years ago would have turned their noses up at them.

Artifacts, ideas, attitudes: these are in our ecosystem and all influence us for good and ill. To think otherwise is simply fooling oneself.

We pride ourselves on originality and individuality, but I find those to be overrated. One, it's damn near impossible to be completely original and it's damned foolishness to think you exist as a hermetically sealed sui generis being.

Family, friends, media diet, physical surroundings, the supernatural all affect us in ways we don't fully understand.

You can make your own choices, but they don't appear from the ether to your mind not previously digested by others.

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