I think they are called the backdoor boys or N’Suck or something…
(please note I put “artists” in quotes)
Yeah, and fight for the proletariat! Down with the bourgeois!
You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake!
Uhhh. 
We are not lambs to the slaughter here due to advertising alone. Well, we could take a Brave New World look at the affair and conclude we are bred into commercialism (whatever the hell that means) but I doubt it.
Arguments like this always run the way of the subconscious. Yeah, right next to the spirit, right? Under the hood, left of the battery? 
What you’re seeing is the need for money coupled with the level of humiliation one is willing to accept to have said money.
“A person is a thing of value if and only if he or she is willing to submit to whatever degradation and abuse is required to maintain that position. anything less betrays a lack of commitment.” ~~ Steve Albini. Favorite quote of mine, always puts “obligation” and “desire” into a nice perspective for me.
What do you think, is it all one big clown show? I can almost here “Enter the Gladiator” now! (yes, that’s the song they play for the clowns…)
Aside, I don’t know that our “lard ass culture” sees McD’s as a way of life. I see just as many Bally’s Fitness commercials as I do food ads. Or do you merely contest to famous people liking food?
It’s not free, I have to have cable in order to watch and I PAY for that, and every few months it seems they raise the prices.**
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What you’re paying for is improved reception. If you check the history of cable, you’ll see that’s what it was first touted as.
You can (in theory) put a Radio Shack antenna on a 200-foot mast on your roof and you’ll pick up a bunch of TV stations without having to pay the cable company.
Around this time of year that may be case with fitness clubs taking advantage of those that want to get “back in shape” but are unable to make the necessary lifestyle changes to do so because they are so certain that “McDonalds is a way of life.” For the most part I see much more ads for high calorie, high fat, high sodium “food.” Wasn’t McDonald’s slogan “Everyday” for a while? Fairly conducive to the couch potato lifestyle, eh? Then once a year for two weeks after new years the gym gets really busy with everyone thinking they can get fit fast with some miracle exercise machine or diet along with a bit of low intensity exercise. It works so rarely that it’s almost humourous.
No I can’t, got community rules that say no antennas, I can get a dish but that costs too. Also cable isn’t all that great, I have a number of channels that come out like crap, usually TLC, MTV, CSPAN and a couple of others. I was always informed that the reason for cable was so that we would have no ads.
I’m kind of surprised that nobody has mentioned that watching TV is an optional pass time. The idiot box is equipped with an off switch. I turned mine off six years ago, haven’t turned it back on yet, and I doubt I ever will by my own volition. I would have trashed it long ago, but Mrs. Pyrrhonist enjoys movies on the VCR (though I don’t watch with her anymore.)
Going back to the OP, I have to agree with the ** bladeohlsson’s** assessment that “There is seriously very little it has to offer in terms of entertainment anymore,” but disagree about its moribundity. I think it’s alive and kicking, adored by millions and millions in this country alone. Many public places (automotive garages and shopping malls et al) have a TV on as de facto standard as though the people of this country couldn’t survive more than a few hours without it. I don’t believe the internet or other forms of entertainment will not significantly reduce the TV time in the average household.
Just the other night I was obliged to eat dinner at the in-law’s with the TV blaring “The Wheel of Fortune” in the back ground. I get queasy around TVs nowadays much in the same way as non-smokers get sick at second-hand smoke; I think people build up a tolerance from childhood to the stupidity, the noise, and flickering images. People watch it mindlessly as though it were a drug. Karl Marx once wrote: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” I think replacing “TV” (and “Movies”) for religion in that quote would give an accurate description of the modern world. I choose not to pollute my mind the tripe on TV, but that is my choice and many would disagree with my wholesale condemnation. Productive, meaningful lives can be lived without the idiot box, but it has become so engrained into modern society that few people realize, as I said before, that is an option.
bladeohlsson:
Because we need to buy things to stay alive and maintain a reasonable quality of life, and we need to know which things to buy.
I didn’t suggest trusting every word of a TV commercial. But without advertising, how would you even know what’s around? By walking into every store in town and asking what’s new?
You can only research something if you know what to research.
Obviously I don’t walk onto the lot and say “I hear wider is better. Sell me the widest car you have. Money is no object!” But advertisements certainly help me know what’s available, which features are interesting.
I have digital cable so I get like two hundred something channels. I cannot understand why, but Superman 2 has been on at least 10 times a week for the past YEAR! Why the hell is this? What about all the other Superman movies… What about all the other NONSuperman movies out there. I laugh everytime I see it on now. I don’t know whether it’s funny that they keep playing it, or if it is sad that I am paying for this…