Escalation of Dumb.

A lot of our modern world, from discourse online, to advertising, to politics can be explained by a scene from the 1950s Broadway musical then movie, "West Side Story."

In the prelude to the rumble between the Jets and the Sharks, the weapons of choice keep escalating. 

Fists. Bricks. Hoses. Belts. Bottles. Chains. Knives. Guns.

The same madness is happening in politics and in advertising.

In just eight years we've gone from a Brick like Sarah Palin to an Automatic Weapon like Donald Trump. The darkness, ignorance and hate get more and more powerful. 

Because the only way to get attention in the outlandish dopamine-driven world we live in is to do something absolutely mad.

Trump, IMO, isn't competing with Harris for attention.

He's competing with the Dark Web. 

Whatever crazy-ass rumor starts there, he has to build on. Lest someone else get more attention than he does. 

This is truly truly frightening.

And dangerous.

And there's no turning back.

Meanwhile the same descent is happening over on what used to be called "Madison Avenue." It was called Madison Avenue before the entire, hugely profitable industry was bought up, eviscerated and relegated to the fringes (the ad industry is no longer located near its clients, because the ad industry is no longer important to its clients).

Now, we do handbags that hold mayonnaise jars. And every agency that pays an electric bill blathers on about the myriad awards they've won when viewers like you and I can literally go months (if not years) without seeing a spot or an ad we actually notice and like.

Seriously, when was the last time you said, "I wish I did that?" About an ad that actually ran. Not a stunted stunt that twelve people outside of the agency bubble will ever see.

The post above, er, the inscrutable post above is a good example of sludge swirling down a clogged drain. 

A couple days ago I saw on Linked In the promotion I pasted above. I've shared it with friends. Friends 30 years younger than I and friends who used to lead large New York agencies.

This isn't more Ogilvy bashing on my part.

I literally can make no sense of the (long) sentence above. Part of that might because they decided not to punctuate it. But a larger part is that it's just plain-old baffling. And now, someone will have to say something more absurd to knock that absurdity off its pinnacle.

[As always, if anyone at Ogilvy would like to explain this, this space, and my 85K weekly readers are all yours. I won't even edit.]

Bringing this back to my West Side Story example above, this is an escalation not of street weapons but of a dangerous grasping at what's momentary, while ignoring (because you're social first) the millions of people who aren't social first and who don't understand what you're saying or who want something very different from the marketing they get.

We live in a world where it seems the majority can no longer discern the difference between truth and falsehood. You see examples of that every day. And not just if you read Orwell.

You see it in advertising, too.

No one anymore knows what's good. What works. Or how to reach people.

I'll wait for the definitive white paper on the topic.