A Disturbing Trend

I have noticed, in the past week or so, a disturbing trend in Prague Metros.  Advertising.  Well, of course, you could say, why do you start complaining now?  You’ve lived here for 13 years, walked past the advertising in the entrance foyers, seen it lining the walls at an angle all the way

The offending advert

down the escalator, watched the changing of the billboards in the center of the platform as, movie release by movie release, seasonal sale by seasonal sale, grand opening after grand opening they mark the ongoing history of life in the city, watched the screens on the opposite side of the tracks, as they report the news and throw in a little advertising and a few PSAs on the side, and then the trains – oh, the trains with ads running the length of the car just above eye length, right where you have to look if you don’t want to look at the faces in the mob, the ads in the plexiglass at the ends of the rows, and the massive clot of stickers for night clubs, bordellos, neofascists and antifascists, and then on the way out you have the vertical faces of the stairs painted up so that when you see the whole thing at once, it says McDonalds 100 meters or something.

But this is different.  They have started putting advertising on the columns which divide the central platform from the platform next to the tracks.  It was the one place you could turn your back on commercialism and stare at the cool brown or beige tiles and contemplate on whatever you needed to contemplate on.

Soon, the world will be inundated.  I see advertising on the sides of large buildings in highly visible areas, and wonder how long it will take before there is advertising on the side of every apartment block.  I know some people have already received payment for getting a company’s logo as a tattoo, some people have rented out their pregnant bellies or their bald heads.   We wear hats and T-shirts with advertising logos and never think about it.

How far can it go?  Will signs soon be hanging from the trees in the parks?  Will someone figure out how to plant their company logo on the moon, as Heinlein predicted?  Where, if ever, does it end?