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United States News Title: Exxon Telescreens The really top-drawer dystopian novels end up like news accounts that got published a couple of decades before the events they describe. Orwells 1984 came to mid the other day as I rolled up to a pump at an Exxon station and found myself being pestered by a TeeVee built into the gas pump. It came to life loudly as soon as I fed my credit card into the reader. Pushy sales pitches masquerading as online as content, the euphemism for ads from which you will learn more as opposed to merely being the object of a sales pitch. Is there any escape from perpetual peddlering? How long before someone figures out how to embed a tiny flatscreen on the side of a Starbucks coffee cup? Its not two-way, I dont think. Yet. But like Orwells Telescreens, you cant turn it off or even turn it down unless you are an Inner Party member, I suppose and the only way to get away is to stop pumping and flee. I did exactly that. I put in the bare minimum $5 and took off. Luckily, there are still some old-timey stations that just pump gas and not ads, too. Speaking of which how about Yahoo? They are doing the electronic-funnel-in-your-mouth thing, too. If you empty your email (in-box, spam, trash) a got-damned video begins to play. You did not ask or click. It just does. And turning it off is hard. Some bastard arranged the software such that you have to click double-plus-twice before the damnable message cues off. This has also become SOP on CNNs site. Try to read something and within seconds, a video plays. And will continue playing. Endlessly. YouTube, too. Watch one video one you chose to watch and another dials up, unless you manually click on cancel. I guess they dont want people to read anything and silence is, of course, dangerous. People might actually think if they werent being constantly distracted by metrosexual male announcers with ubiquitously scruffy beards (the one still-allowed expression of superficial maleness) or his always-perky female counterpart. On and on they yak, never ending. There are TeeVees in McDonalds. Everywhere. Most people have several in their homes, theres one in their car and they carry around a miniature one in their pocket or purse. Just like 1984 only voluntary in the technical sense that the government hasnt exactly forced them on people. But try to avoid them, regardless. It is damned hard. Even if you personally dont grok or want and may actually despise all this stuff, youre carried along for the evil ride, as in a rip tide. A gadget-bedazzled public wants this stuff and the corporations happily oblige because there is money in it. The banks spew debt to finance it and everyone or almost everyone buys in because hey, plants crave Brwando. It has electrolytes and plants crave that. Try to buy a new car without a TeeVee built into the dash. It is almost as hard as finding a car without air bags, but unlike the air bags the TeeVees werent mandated by the government. The child-minded fools out there want to be distracted and to peck at images on a screen like seagulls do at scraps of aluminum foil left on the beach. Most car reviews not mine, I am an Aurochs hardly mention mechanical things or driving things. Instead, they harp on the electronic things. Because, like plants and Brwando, its what people crave. The dystopian novels were predictive in another important way. The only escape is to shed the lot of it. Halfway measures arent possible. You face the choice of becoming a bedazzled Elio who craves his Brwando fix each day or you can become a Mr. Savage, as in the counterpoint to Orwells 1984 Huxleys Brave New World. Which, arguably, was the more predictive of the two. Control via soporific and enstupidation rather than outright violence, which in the Huxlian world was hardly ever necessary. Turn adults into perpetual children, addled and mostly docile. Feed them sex and distraction, especially sports but also celebrity. Keep them entertained which means, keeps their minds off anything else. Do this early and often enough and they will never develop the capacity to think. Or mind being fed content while they feed their car petroleum Brwando. It is, after all, what they crave. Subscribe to *Cars and Automotive* Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top Page Up Full Thread Page Down Bottom/Latest
#1. To: Deckard (#0)
More Brwando, please. It's got electrolytes.
You are just now noticing this? I only recently got a Exxon credit card,but the Shell station where I usually buy gas has had this for the last couple of years,at least. Got so I don't even notice it. The one at the Shell station does news and weather first,and I tune it out after that. I got an Exxon card so I would have options while traveling,and have only used it a couple of times so far,and honestly can't remember what the people on screen were babbling about while I was pumping gas. In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.
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