Sound, Fury, Signifying & Nothing, LLC.

Usually when I read something I like online, I make a pdf of it and file it away. Especially when that something teeters on the brink of being profound and intelligent. I must have thousands of articles saved this way. 

Last week I read something. However, I failed to save it and now I can't seem to find it again. That's lamentable. Because it was good.

Fortunately, I remember the principle in the article that appealed to me.

The central gist was simple.

As a "culture," we no longer make art.

We only do "entertainment."

I haven't been to the movies for about twenty years partly because I have no interest in seeing a movie about comic book characters, ie. the Marvel universe, or a sequel on a sequel on a sequel.

I used to read Marvel comics when I was a boy. They cost 12-cents back in 1968 and they were a pretty good deal. I enjoyed things like Spiderman when I was a ten or eleven. Probably up to the time I turned thirteen. Then I started being more interested in girls than in fictional superheroes, my reading changed. I moved onto other things. I outgrew the Incredible Hulk, etc. 

The point is simple.

As a culture, entertainment has overwhelmed art.

We care more about how much revenue something generates, how much it's earning from licensing and spin-offs than we care about what it's trying to say.

There's no more Carol Read's "The Third Man." We're more today about "The Fantastic Four." The math hasn't helped us.

I wonder if there's an industry parallel as well.

We no longer do messaging. That's hard work. Intellectually demanding. Serious. A value exchange. You give us attention, we help you make a wise purchase decision. 

That's too much for today.

I'm told repeatedly no one wants that.

They want Gefilte Fish flavored ice cream.

So, we do "entertainment."

We no longer do meaning.

We do stunts.

I think it all comes down to an axe I've been grinding for quite a while. We no longer have the patience or the belief in what we make as ad agencies or clients. We don't believe there's anything important or interesting about what we do. We so don't believe in what we do, we replace the art of advertising with au courant "entertainment."

I saw a Porsche monstrosity with Dua Lipa not too long ago.

Dua Lipa is a long way from righting the ship-a.

So, we spend scarce marketing dollars and do shit like this. Which I would imagine actually depresses sales, and people. It's notorious, yes. And nauseating.

Like so much today.

...it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

I know fuck-all about QSRs, but I know Burger King is a poster-child for failed attempts at relevance. Right now, despite a successful $5 meal promotion, same-store sales are still down. And have been for three or four decades and thirty or forty agencies.

Yet, rather than redouble their efforts and try to sell food people want and are willing to pay for, 

they waste their time doing crap like this. 

Back in ancient times until, I suppose about 40 years ago, people used to call behaviors like this "fiddling while Rome burned."

Like the ad industry entering awards shows, hiring a CEO for every month of the year, and banging on about being network of the year when they have 80-percent fewer employees than they had in the year 2000.

Many years ago, and by way of conclusion, back in 1999 when dot-coms were all the rage--pre dot-com bust--I worked with a brainy account guy who summed up our client's business model this way: "They lose money on everything they sell, but they make it up in volume."

That seems to be our way today.

Most of what we make contributes to our destruction and the destruction of the people paying us.

A couple thousand years ago, Cicero exclaimed, "O tempore! O mores!" Oh the times, oh the customs.

I prefer, "O tempore! O morons."