Semiotic Sanctimony.

[wolven7]

I would like to take a moment to discuss with you the sanctimonious bullshit semiotics of the most recent Visa commercial.

The commercial takes place in New Orleans, and features New Orleans Saints "fans" and players, using their Visa cards for the purpose of purchasing merchandise, eating food in their clothing merchandise, and generally being happy little blue-collar, Regular Jane/Joe, NOLA-Loving, happy consumer whores. And then in walks THE SQUARE (Dun Dun Duunnnnnnnnn.).

The blonde white guy in the pink shirt and cable-knit sweater knotted around his shoulders, walks up to the counter to buy tennis balls that *gasp* aren't New Orleans Saints-related, and *double gasp* uses Actual Paper Money to do it. The message is insanely clear:

Only Squares Use Money.

Now, there are any number of reasons that I will prefer to use paper money rather than pay with a card, not least of which being my inherent paranoia, and the tracking on my movements, behaviours and buying patterns, via my credit card purchases and site visits (Hello Facebook and Google.). But there's something else, here, when I stop to think about it, and it's more amusing than anything else: Money.

It's blessed by the treasury wizards (read: "Alan Greenspan"), and suddenly little pieces of special greenish paper (with purple, red, blue, and other highlights) are worth a settled amount of your goods and services. Our money is, as Patrick once put it to me, based almost entirely on good feelings, anyway. And when you use a credit card? You've made the alchemical transmutation formula more complex, more involved, but you're still turning happy thoughts and wishes and modest-to-good military capability into gold-standard.

When I use cash, it hurts less that i'm using someone else's thought forms to run my life.

Credit just makes me want to change it all the faster.

Cross-posted.

Comments

Aye

[karishi.livejournal.com]

I hated that commercial. The other two I've seen in the same vein have been just as offensive. One implied:
"Using money will slow everything down, break up life's flow."
The other said:
"Your use of money will so offend people that they will leave the lunch line they've been waiting in so that they are not seen in your presence."

Much like a statement Jon Stewart made a few weeks ago: Get a better lie. People use money, all over the place, all the time, and the ads are trying to leverage/kickstart some nonexistent peer pressure.
And, any card that is as convenient as the commercial claims...I don't want it to exist, unless it also pops up a picture of the user on the clerk's screen. It makes it even easier for someone to steal all my treasury wizard blessings.

Re: Aye

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Name and picture, on a secure, encrypted server. Verification process might take as long as money, then. Also, with the malfunction rate of that machinery, and the time it takes to sign a receipt, doing a little math (read: "pushing some buttons that do math for you") isn't that hard.

[paosparti.livejournal.com]

You HAVE to read "Making Money"! while I've always believed that money is sort of a shared dream and more than a little silly. Pratchett again has made wonderful satire out of it.

And it all makes me yearn for my little moneyless farm/village. It sucks when a dream just makes you heartsick all the time rather than being a motivator. I just can't do any more to obtain it than I'm already doing.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

I've been wanting to get that one, for a while... Still a few others I need to check out, too.

It should be able to motivate, rather than depress. Just have to keep trying.

[paosparti.livejournal.com]

well don't read it if you haven't read going postal yet. you wont get the jokes it's a new series. You know like he has his death novels, witch novels, rencewind novels, watch novels and so on.

yeah i know it should be able to motivate... 'but cause I can't do anything more I just get heartsick because I'm doing all I can.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

I read GP earlier this spring/summer. I loved it.

Take heart in doing all you can, and hope that others take your lead.

Shave and a haircut

[raidingparty.livejournal.com]

First, public service announcement about the use of credit cards. (not necessarily directed at wolven, unless he's unaware) People not paying them off are just icing on the cake. The majority of their money is made through transaction charges; they keep 1-15% of each transaction, plus various other fees. (These fees are why some stores have minimum purchases for credit cards, despite the service agreement to the contrary.)
The first kick is that to make the same profit on an item, a retailer would need to raise prices. When credit cards first came out, the few stores that accepted them often added the appropriate charge to the purchase price, but things have changed and now they would have to raise prices across the board to equalize. This means that other people end up paying for the credit card user's so-called convenience.
Lots of stores accept the discount anyway as part of the price of doing business, since consumers are more likely to make impulse purchases and/or ignore costs. And they'll almost never reach into their pockets, find out they don't have enough, and put it back on the shelf. This is only good for the retailer in theory; in practice, this form of consumerism is unsustainable, since it encourages people to buy beyond their means, for reasons that won't necessarily make them more productive (see also U.S. trade deficit... well, crap). Taken to an extreme, people who continually employ such buying patterns go bankrupt and can't go to the store, and the store runs out of customers.
Responsible store owners would carefully cultivate their harvest rather than eating the seeds, but it's difficult to build that kind of relationship in mass markets. Although I have heard about a comic shop weaning a Magic card addict off of Magic cards.
Antinonirregardless, yes, they want their thumbs in every pie.
... tattooing the mark of the beast on your forearm can't be too far behind.
... yes, I used a credit card last night to buy my gas.

Second, I can't help but remember Douglas Adam's jab at government trying to make people happy with their concern about the pieces of paper when the paper isn't unhappy in the least.

Re: Shave and a haircut

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Well, you'd think, but people don't seem to understand delayed gratification, or extended gratification, past a certain point.