The cartoon on the business page of my newspaper today shows some executives of the sales division of a large company saying to one another: 'We don't need smarter products, we just need dumber customers.'
So now it's official. That is how we keep our economies growing and civilization progressing. Gold plated WCs, personality enhancing pills, phones with 66,000 apps, banks which offer 'relationships', $10,000 pens which give you a special status in the eyes of other morons like you, coaching classes that will make Edisons, Curies and Fords out of every idiot kid, anything will do.
Just so long as the customer is dumb enough.
Just so long as the customer is dumb enough.
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3 comments:
This post of yours slowly brought to mind a shameful memory from years ago and made me think that the cosmetics industry, apart from all the others, has probably been laughing about the same for a while. It was a decade or so ago that I stopped by a regular shop in Dakhshinapan to buy a shampoo, and a special sales-girl jumped on me. I smiled knowingly wondering what she was going to try with me. She started talking about some miracle cream. I was laughing in her face saying something or the other when she looked at me and said, "...dekhun na apnaar chamraa-ta ki kharap. Koto daag, koto wrinkles, koto beshi boyesh bere giyechhe apnaar...chamraa jhule giyechhe..." and she tsk-tsked. She even showed me how my face looked in a horrible mirror she had. I started feeling like a monkey and then an amphibian, a crocodile to be specific. I am ashamed to say that I bought her miracle cream (I'm too ashamed to say how much it cost, and it didn't even smell nice) and never forgave myself nor forgot about it. I haven't been duped again but that one time was more than enough, and this was after I heartily laughed with the girl/young woman from the movie The truth about cats and dogs...
Dumb customers...and economies can grow and civilizations can progress because we haven't nailed something better.
It is the hallmark of a good cartoonist that he cuts very close to the bone, Shilpi (I have begun my latest post on the other blog with a cartoon). One who is aware of the grand sweep of history can only feel black despair and disdain when he sees that modern 'civilization' has for its motto 'You live to buy, anything that is on the market has got to be bought, and you are what you buy'. All career ambitions stop there too: 'I must join the vast global herd of unthinking consumers at the earliest'! The Kingfisher calendar, offering pictures of a bevy of skimpily clad bimbos, has become a must-buy for many people in India too, I hear, and the other day I was reading an interview of the photographer involved, who informed the correspondent in all seriousness that he has a 'very challenging' job... as did Churchill at the height of World War II, I suppose he meant, as did the NASA ground-control staff when they sent men to the moon, as does a surgeon removing a tumour from deep within the brain, as does a teacher who is trying to impress a young pupil with the full grandeur of a Shakespearean sonnet!
Respected Sir,
Warm regards.The cat is really out of the bag this time around-but the larger question that arises-who is to really blame?Customers have been conned into believing that slick marketing and a lifestyle that gorges on visual sensuousness makes a product that can be easily 'consumed'.So lamentably few are the persons who value authenticity and meaning at all in life-it would be really nice if the company guys could invent a Virtual Reality application that allows users to remain jacked in to the unreal;maybe they would appreciate the real then only!
What makes us human?It cannot be programmed into a chip,cannot be simulated-for maybe it is the human heart that cannot be replicated.No customer is dumb enough to opt for one!
This comment is getting pretty serious,Sir.I do not really want to sound like a grumpy grouch!!
With best regards,
Debarshi.
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