Hell on Earth?

Not that the world needs any help in generating suffering - in fact, one might suspect it was set up to do precisely that. To what end, I wouldn't know.

But I was thinking, and not for the first time. About this. I think often, you smarmy bastard.
Anyway. I was thinking: advertising is supposed to make people want stuff. No argument there. Does it really accomplish that? Maybe. Sometimes.
How many of you have watched old commercials, or seen old ads? Some? Usually they dissapear after a few weeks or months. But like great works of art, great advertisements should work for all time, for anyone who sees them. I'm not going to say I know of any, but there must be some.

So what you do is this: you simply submerse people in great old ads. Posters from the early 1900s. Newspaper spreads. Tv ads. Old newsreel bits. And especially focus on products that are no longer in existence. If the ads work, the people exposed should develop some desire for something that they cannot have.

Can you profit from this? Perhaps. Probably not directly. But is it fun? Yes. Oh, yes.


What? You can't possibly think it's undeserved? Christians and Buddhists both teach that one should be seperate from earthly desires, right? Presumably, longings for such earthly and transitory things are bad. So, this will have no effect on those people who have their priorities straight. Moral people, in other words. It is thus a perfect plan, for it punishes only the wicked. Heheheh.

Unfortunately, there is no guarantee it'd work, and worse yet, people are very clever. Those old products would probably be recreated and sold again, until people quickly remembered why the product failed in the first place. Does that mean the people would stop wanting those products, even with great ads? Or does it mean people already experience longing for things that no longer exist? Perhaps this system is already somewhat in effect....
It's an interesting idea.