10:59 am | 0 recommendations | 3 comments

It's an Ad, Ad World

Yesterday, a former stripper sold one of her removed breast implants on eBay for over $16,000. EBay has always had its share of strange auctions. The company who bought the grilled-cheese sandwich with an image of the Virgin Mary on it was the same one that bought the implant.

What alarms me more than people selling strange objects was the people selling themselves. It started when Andrew Fischer auctioned his forehead off as ad-space for a month, and got over $37,000. Since then, there have been a slew of opportunists with similar schemes. One woman sold her pregnant belly as a billboard for $4,000. And currently a 475 pound man is selling his 8XL sized shirts as space for advertising.

This has all lead to Body Billboardz and Human Banner. Soon, corporations will give out scholarships to students willing to wear logos for their entire college career, not unlike athletes. Eventually this could lead to a world where people are more citizens of a corporation than a country. The corporation pays for your education, to make an ideal employee. They will manage every aspect of your existence: your diet (low fat), your health (exercise regiment), your habits (no smoking or excessive drinking), and your spending (only buy products from the corporation or allies).

This is a world where corporations make amazing officers and managers, an investment for a person's lifetime. One can imagine wars being fought between Pepsi and Coca-Cola workers. And one can take this to the ridiculous extreme where the concept of a nation dissolves away completely. Maybe such an existence isn't 1984 or Brave New World, but there is a point where businesses can go to far. Isn't the world's wellbeing more important than a corporation having remarkable growth every year? There should be limits to advertising. It's bad enough we get jingles stuck in our brains. We don't need to sell them the entire head, as well.