Response # 7 (edited)

Why can’t Johnny dissent?

Dissent: to publicly disagree with an official opinion, decision, or set of beliefs (as defined by Merriam-Webster)

“Now the realization the nothing threatens the system has freed advertising o exploit even the most marginal elements of society” (Thomas Frank page 320)

After reading the piece by Thomas Frank I believe the answer is relatively obvious, Johnny like millions of other Americans can’t dissent because no amount of dissent will alter or change the system. Corporations tell us to be who we are, express ourselves to strike up debate to have our voices heard but who does that really benefit us or them? The biggest shocker in this article for me was the opening story about Lucky Strike cigarettes, the idea that a campaign meant to be about a woman’s right to smoke was actually a media strategy of a corporation.

To quote Frank again “ if cultural rebellion serves as merely another marketing tool for transnational corporations, then just how effective a rebellion can cultural resistance be?”
In a way it’s as if corporations are telling you to rebel, break the rules, but do it with them. On page 324 there are a list of slogans from various companies and their pitch at cultural rebellion and standing out. Burger King is probably my favorite example because multiple slogans of theirs reflect this. First “sometimes you gotta break the rules” and then “have it your way” and “no rules just right”. So they’ve created this idea that eating in an establishment that lets you say “no pickles” or “extra cheese” makes you a rebel or dissent from other fast food chains that will only serve you a generic one size fits all burger. Now zoom out and look at the big picture, you say “oh I choose to eat at burger king beacuse they’re different, I eat how I want” but you’re really feeding Burger Kings interests you’re keeping their brand and their name alive and out there.

This to me says, yea revolt against brands, against major corporations but use other corporations to do that. I think we as a nation can’t dissent because we’re in a hamster wheel of big business and no matter which direction we run or how fast we run, the wheel still belongs to the corporation.

Neuroplasticity

Carr discusses how we can actually train our brains to notice, not notice or not feel certain things. In one example he talks about how they were able to make the sea slug not feel pain by touching a nerve by repeatedly tapping the nerve until it was no longer registered.

Though not the same physically the example this makes me think of is how desensitized we are because of using social media. For example when we hear about, school or large scale public place shootings we’re not as horrified as we were when the Oklahoma City Bombings happened. They occurred in different periods of time and it was a big story where as now as sad as it is we hear about incidents like Sandy Hook or the South Carolina church shootings too often. By using social media in such large quantities we tend to become disconnected on insensitive, in a way hitting the same nerve over and over until we no longer feel the reaction to it.