Has Affluenza Turned the American Dream into a Nightmare?
person drives, the five minutes of commercials between songs on the radio (although, in today’s musical landscape, that is not necessarily a bad thing) and the inserts dropping into one’s lap from magazines, it has also become fashionable to attach ads over even the urinals inside public restrooms. Go to a sporting event and the stadium is not only decorated with advertisements all around, but the giant screen that shows the action will be trying to get attendees to buy things. Even the last bastion of commercial-free entertainment has been ruined by the introduction of large-scale commercials; going to see a movie inside a theater used to be a respite from commercials, but today a move that is advertised as starting at noon won’t actually begin playing until 12:20 after the commercials that precede the movie trailers are added. Advertising is insidious in America; it is something that is quite literally inescapable. The American economy used to be constructed around production, but to
