Bookmark this: what the adverts we see today say about the state of Scotland |
Where once there were adverts for real physical books, today there’s only adverts for celebrity audiobooks. This reveals something very troubling, argues our Writer at Large
It's worth pausing sometimes to consider the adverts that fill our cities, on billboards and neon signs, pasted on buses and inside trains.
Try, if you can, not to use your eyes like a passive consumer – bombarded with false promises and dreams for sale. It’s hard, because that’s what the ad execs want you to do. Turn the tables on them, though, and use your eyes more as an anthropologist attempting to work out what these images and words say about the times we live in and who we are as a people.
I do this every so often. Sometimes I get an itch I have to scratch, and I feel the need to explore the city I call home; a city I know well but regularly need to rediscover.
Cities change, just like people, and you’ve got to maintain your interest to remain friends. So I go walking from one side of Glasgow to the other. Finding new haunts and fond memories in the city's streets helps me think.
I’ll hop a train and ride it somewhere, take a bus somewhere else. Streets I haven’t visited in months have been redeveloped or become tumbledown. The city grows and changes like a face. The avenues and neighbourhoods tell you the city’s story, what’s happened to it of late.
Read more by Neil Mackay
Michael Jackson and how the biopic became celebrity propaganda
Here’s the secret to a happy life: it’s easy and costs nothing
I quit Twitter and the world became a much happier place
Those adverts are part of that story. They demand attention. They tell you........