What is true? What is fake? Living in a postmodern society
has made me question everyday what is the difference between what is true and
fake. We are all surrounded by advertisements and media that flood our brains
with a million different opinions and statistics about something, that it
becomes very difficult who to believe in. Maybe everything we hear is lie and
that there is no such thing as a true advertisement or statistic.
I have had this question etched inside my brain and
continuously observe how advertisements evidently lie to the audience. One
might see “Amazing results within 5 weeks!” plastered on a diet system’s
website. These “amazing” results trick us to believe that we will be 100%
satisfied with these results. However, people have different opinions on what
is 100% satisfaction to them. Living in a postmodern world, the people who make
these advertisements, design them so that we draw our attention to them and
want to focus on nothing but the ad. Living in a postmodern world, we have
become predictable on what attracts our attention and how to convince us to buy
things. And yet all of these ads are fake in one way or another.
Some adversiters ingenuously put forth a “promise” or “resolution” if
one buys/invests their product. For
example, advertisements for gym equipment show actors using the equipment with
huge smiles on their faces. Frequently the ad shows one a chart of how fit they
will be after using the machine for 5 months. To me this is completely
pointless and tricks people to think that they will be as fit as the actors in
the advertisement after using the machine for 5 months. This is absolutely fake
because the actors themselves most likely had to do extreme workout sessions
with a personal trainer to get their bodies in shape.
Why is America putting forth these false advertisements? To
this day I have a hard time depicting what is real and fake when it comes to
the advertisements I see on TV, the Internet, billboards, buses, brochures, etc.
Living in a postmodern world is a matter of thinking to oneself… is this true….
or fake?
I agree wholeheartedly. The concept of advertising anything, products to politicians, is based around subterfuge and subliminal messaging as opposed to the validity of the advertised object. However, I would also argue (not for post-modernism, but my own views) that viewing things in a way that they must be either "real" or "fake," leads to trouble. Whether or not such absolute truths really exist, they are unknowable, or at least impossible to prove.
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