We know what we don’t want… Everyone does.
A society that fails to laugh at itself fails in advertising — Satire died, that’s what happened to advertising, and everything else.
We know what we don’t want… Everyone does. The horrible things, and I do not believe I need to list those things… We are intelligent, intellectual adults, we know how to treat our fellow humans, we know when we have done wrong, and we know when we have hurt someone, or otherwise offended someone, by being rude.
But, do we know what we want?
Commentary on our society no longer makes us laugh, instead, it makes us question how to walk out the door of our homes before we engage with the public. We can no longer “fuck up” and learn from it, we should emerge from the womb with the understanding of what everyone’s feelings are on everything.
The death of satire
We have come a long way, but we also brought with change a lot of fear, and rudeness disguised as politeness, but it is all individualism and personality. We induced a fear that gave birth to the illusion of being agreed with. The right to complain, and convince others to join our campaigns, and if they don’t we take to the streets, we call it activism.
The truth is, that a large part of our society suffers from insecurities induced in childhood, and these children become insecure adults. Naturally, anything that makes us uncomfortable becomes a threat, it’s considered offensive.
If we are truly aiming to have an inclusive and diverse society that creates equity, then we must understand that the desire for equality is misguided, what we want is justice where there is injustice. No human being should be treated as less than others, no group should be ostracized because they are different unless that group promotes hate and anger. No individual should have to feel a need to demand fair treatment, but we must also beware of zealots, individuals who project their problems onto the rest of us as a form of injustice, a desire to be agreed with.
Universal design, communication and opportunities do not focus on individual problems, it is a principle founded on the philosophy of a tolerant society, that’s what true diversity is, a place where we don’t have to agree but can be respected for a difference in opinion and views.
Satire is dead, or it's dying, we can no longer engage in the witticisms of cleverly writing great advertising because we are no longer witty, we are politically correct.
Photographer Jack Daly’s satirical ’80s ads challenge the concept of masculinity — “[M]asculinity is a concept as outdated as can be, and yet in 2018 it’s as prevalent as ever. Photographer Jack Daly has been surrounded and pressured by stereotypes forever, and finally he’s calling it out. In a personal project entitled The Real Man Catalogue, Daly has pointed the finger at society and questioned what the phrase Real Man does to minorities, to young boys, to all men. A tongue-in-cheek collection of work, he was inspired by early 80s print ads, which he’d “been gorging over…they seemed like the perfect way to highlight how outdated these masculine stereotypes are”, he explained, “how ridiculous I think they are”. Tackling masculine conventions one satire at a time, the series challenges what we think it means to be male in today’s world.”
Jack Daly should be able to make fun of these ads, or their nonsocial perception of masculinity as much as they should be allowed to make those ads. Why should anyone be offended by this? This is just an example to make my point, I do not know of any specific situation where people were offended by Jack’s collection or the ads themselves. However, we know of situations where people find things offensive and then aim to get them removed from our history, aka “canceled.”
