Advertisitis is a disease, most commonly suffered by middle class adults with higher education degrees and good paying jobs who enjoy reading and thinking critically about things. Its victims see dollar signs in the eyes of everyone who provides them with information about something on which they might want to spend money. Many of them contract the disease by reading
Atlas Shrugged or some other book by
Ayn Rand, or studying marketing. A person suffering from advertisitis is often referred to as "the quiet one." Symptoms include:
* Not being very talkative.
* Playing
Devil's Advocate to every idea that involves the spending of money.
* Cynicism.
* An inability to enjoy the money they have earned themselves.
* Being tongue-tied when opportunities arise to promote the things they really believe in.
This last symptom arises from the well-documented psychological phenomenon of projection, wherein an adversitic projects his or her illness onto others. Just like anyone else, the advertisitic wants others to accept his or her ideas and share them with others. Spreading one's ideas is fun and profitable. Advertisitics are paranoid of being exploited by people who only want money. The fear of being spurned as such an
opportunist keeps advertisitics quiet. After all, when we share our ideas, what are we doing besides using others to spread them around?
I suffer from this disease. I know that
Don Eminizer's new book (at http://www.99burning.com/)
Midnight In America is a good read. I enjoyed it, and it presents a very raw view of the world from a person whose joy comes not from pleasing others, but from finding substances that create euphoria and other sensations. This is extremely valuable. However, I make $1.50 or so every time a copy is sold because I am the publisher. It's therefore very difficult for me to justify telling people that it's a good book and that they should buy it.
There are many other things that I'd like to promote:
questioning authority, the creation of technologies that could allow government services to be rendered only to those willing to pay for them directly,
Condorcet voting, trusting but verifying, humility, looking for merit in arguments against one's opinions and beliefs,
paying only for what you want, and
expecting only what you pay for.
This essay is a small step in my efforts to exorcise advertisitis from my mind. Won't you help?