Microwave Mentality: part one

Here’s a big revelation for you: The way we live has changed.
Urban centers decayed when the middle class moved to the suburbs. The front porch got moved to the back. We used to know our neighbors. Now we’d rather know someone across the globe, at least online.

But it’s not just physical locations that change. The way we behave has changed. Our views of privacy are at once threatened and secured by autonomous digital corporations.

The way we communicate has changed. We went from recounting a long history in the oral tradition, to written word. The art of conversation was just that. An art. And one that fostered revolutionary ideas at that. Along the advancement chain we went from printed word to the telephone, emails, texts, and tweets to finally those great signifiers of brilliant elocution: Lol and #YOLO.

Most people call this progress. And in one sense it is. But in another sense, it’s a really horrible thing. Especially for advertising, and the chosen demographics.

We are suffering from what I call a Microwave Mentality.

Think about it. No really. Think about it. We now have absurd amounts of convenience in the first world, and yet we aren’t really more productive at all. The more we allow gadgets to do the thinking for us, the less we think for ourselves, or even want to think for ourselves. The more data that flashes past our eyes, the less data we’re able to process.

Of course this is a general statement. And thankfully, not everyone is succeptible to this pattern of behavior. But those with a Microwave Mentality are not simply suffering from charming idiosyncracies that are the modern world, 2012. Microwave Mentality is making psychologically vulnerable to advertising’s latest ploys, but also unable to carry on a conversation without it involving a meme of Hillary Clinton on her mobile phone, or Condescending Wonka.

And what’s worse, it’s happening without the people knowing. We thought it’s high time someone in the advertising industry did what they’re supposed to: create awareness about the problem.

Microwave mentality part two: All the news fit to gank
Microwave Mentality part three: Advertising is dead, and other unoriginal ideas.