From Covid-era ads and isolation to reemergence welcoming reality

Make'em STOP! After weeks and weeks of inundation, then seeing this video and sharing with several friends, thought it worth sharing here to perhaps lead to larger conversations. But first, ENOUGH of the cheesy Covid-era ads already. They're all the SAME, quite literally...

They're mind-numbing sap at this point, and maybe a little dangerous...

A new kind of television advertisement has crept into our collective consciousness here in the age of virus. In an effort to show that they care, and you know, sell stuff, major corporations are inundating the airwaves with saccharine-sweet, super-sincere TV spots that are not a little bit dystopian. Indeed, the virus, it seems, is inescapable even when we cut to a few words from our sponsors.

You’ve all seen them. They include phrases like, “In this time, more than any other,” or “As we all rise to the challenge,” or “Stay safe, stay home.” The last one is particularly infuriating. I mean, I am home! I’m watching freakin television! Where do you think I am, a sports bar? I’m just trying to tune out watching “Friends” over here.

In a Dunkin Donuts ad, employees in one store are making masks. An AT&T ad like dozens of others is a for-profit celebration of frontline responders. There is ad after ad after ad of cozy indoor shots of parents teaching kids, people cooking, virtual happy hours, all of it. And they aren’t even honest. A lot of families are at each other’s throats. ...

It is honestly enough to make me long lovingly for the days of “Mike Bloomberg for president” ads that were more prevalent than grains of sand on the beach. ... But annoying as they were, those ads weren’t as cloying and Orwellian as the 30-second spots reinforcing lockdown orders while selling products.

We all know already about the shutdown. It’s not a public service to constantly remind us that we have barely left our houses for two months. One of the big reasons people watch TV is to escape this weird reality for a few hours, to settle into the world as it was, not as it is. But the next thing you know it’s back to hospital rooms and facemasks on the screen, stirring music swelling beneath. Just stop.

You know what I want from TV ads right now? I want pretty people with good, strong teeth pushing products that can dramatically improve my life. I want jokes, and celebrity cameos, contests and yelling. I want some affirmation that someday life will be back to normal, not constant reminders of the current drudgery.

A great danger in a long-term slow-motion crisis is that a narrative can start to set in across the culture. Increasingly. that is reinforcing a victim narrative. After all, there is little some Americans crave more than the mantle of victimhood. It is a message of powerlessness in which all we can do is heat up a can of baked beans and wait for the dictatorship of expertise to give us the all-clear.

Television ads play an outsized role in crafting that narrative. This is in part because TV viewership among Americans is so fragmented that we don’t watch the same news, or the same shows, but we do watch the same ads. It is one of the few forms of television that can still saturate society. Please saturate it with something other than shilling while putting on a coronavirus pageant.

There is a danger of wallowing. Yes, our lives have temporarily changed, but no, coronavirus need not be at the center of our every waking moment. In fact, if we let it be, we will all slowly go insane. So please, big companies and advertisers, just cut us a break. Let us think about something else.

We'll buy your products and services, just end these ridiculously templated ads that keep us stuck in this negative narrative of constant fear. And at their rate of repetition, they're as annoying as those non-stop campaign ads during an election ye...oh, wait a minute...wouldn't too many of our would-be authoritarians across the land savor it all the way to November?

Campaigns aside for the moment, here's where we get into the larger context of politics and society coming out of this performance of sorts, that just like those ads, has to STOP. Instead of acting out some societal role permeating throughout politics and a paid-for press, perhaps allowing the facts to dictate decisions might provide a better outcome for a free society? Just a sober thought...

When the lockdown started we knew why we were doing it. The major fear was that hospitals would be overrun by a deluge of coronavirus cases. That didn’t happen, not even close. But instead of calling the emergency measures a success and moving quickly and aggressively to reopen the economy and restart basic American life, we moved the goalposts to an unreachable endzone of impossible testing levels or a vaccine over a year away. Now we are settling in to perform this new reality for God knows how long.

There seem to be some who think it is too dangerous to return to our normal lives until we invent a time machine so we can go back and fix any mistakes we make in reopening. That’s not how life works, there will be mistakes, and many will be costly. But we have to make judgments based on how things actually are, not based on a pantomime we have now learned to play by rote.

Across the United States this week millions of Americans will see stay at home orders and other pandemic restrictions relaxed. They will face a choice, whether to return to restaurants, beaches, and movie theaters, or to continue their isolation, still waiting for some all clear to be signaled. It is very important that people make this decision by weighing facts; not by playing the part they think society is telling them to play.

Not all of us have to be locked in the basement. In fact, the vast majority of us do not need to be locked in the basement. Just because it creates the optics...doesn’t mean that the period of strict isolation is not ending. It is ending and we should be grateful for that. Getting back out in the world in responsible and safe ways, supporting your friends and neighbors’ small businesses and jobs doesn’t make you a bad person. Being part of the reopening of America is something we all must do eventually.

One of the hardest things to do in life is to rule our ideas and not be ruled by them. This is especially true when because of politics, tribalism, or fear, we become more invested in having been right than in doing the right thing. For well over a month now Americans have performed admirably, played the role of obedient citizens, now it’s time for a new scene.

As the option to engage again in society emerges this week, let Americans weigh it carefully, but not be locked into the mindset of the past two months. Now is the time to learn and to deliver a new line, one that will take us out of this miasma and into the future. Stop performing the coronavirus and start living the reality of the world beyond it that we have begun to enter.

A couple of lines from the season three finale of West World keep sticking with me, both from Dolores...

“There is ugliness in this world. Disarray. I choose to see the beauty.” ...

"Free will does exist... It’s just f*cking hard.”

See the beauty, the positives from what we know, but also how we reemerge, practicing free will responsibly (as it should be). We can continue cautiously optimistic, but let us not choose a lesser, dystopian path for notions of security at the expense of our liberty. Let us get on with life, beautiful life.

H/t: TheFederalist's David Marcus