http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZL6RGkPjws
Advertising has always been a virus that spreads from one person to another with great success and speed. Through the use of song, catchy tag-lines, humor or a memorable persona, the advertisement gets at your mind and you cannot seem to get it out of your head. Even after just watching the slinky commercial once, while looking it up, I have the slinky song stuck in my head. I tell my friend that I saw this "neat" commercial about the slinky and how it's "the bee's knees" and he tells 2 friends, and they tell 2 friends etc. Until it has spread like the disease through the local populous, and the slinky is a toy that is abundant all over the country. This commercial is from over 50 years ago and yet it is very likely that anyone over the age of 6 knows what a slinky is. Nowadays, with the abundance of televisions in American homes, the spread of this virus is much easier.
Companies have even begun to use their own commercials to create parody commercials advertising the same product. The first video is the original and the second is a remix of the commercial made by the same company, advertising the same product, but in a way that may be more effective for a younger market.
https://slapchoprap.com/ver2/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWRyj5cHIQA
This idea of adaptation is very common amongst parasitic organisms as well. Each year there are hundreds of different cold viruses that go around because the virus changes to attempt to attack the human body in a new and more effective way. The advertisers have people working all day to find the new thing that people like and a new way to, in a way, attack the people of the United States and create a new and inventive product that people will want.
Once the 'virus' has infected its target, they are very much in a parasitic relationship in that the company will take the money of their client, while the consumer receives their product. It is possible that they are both very much happy in the exchange that has been made, but when it comes to the products they show late at night, it is quite likely that these products are just for who have the weakest of the consumer immune systems.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4S3C4AC908w
These products sell something that is interesting because it is an item that no one has thought of yet, but often there is a reason it isn't a common family appliance.
As we asked when we watched Shivers, are the people infected by this advertising really worse off? To this I can only answer from my perspective of not believing its one way or the other. As far as the creatures in Shivers, we feel that these are monsters and attacking their human host to current them, but as the movie goes on, it appears that these 'monsters' are changing their human host into a more free form. These victims advance out of their quarantine at the end of the movie to spread out the monsters, but they aren't per-say corrupted. It is true that certain acts seen amongst the victims (homosexual sex/pedophilia), but perhaps this is just a nature that these people have been hiding inside themselves, and the creatures have just allowed this behavior to surface.
In this way, I feel that as it does for the creatures, it is all about perspective. The people who find themselves immune to this parasitic infection see these 'losers' who fall for a simple advertising gimmick as being worse off for buying these unnecessary products that are usually expensive and which they don't need, yet it is quit possible that these people feel very happy with their slapchop or shakeweight and they do not see this downside. Perhaps it is YOUR perspective that really matters and we should simply do what we think is right. If there is a parasite attacking us, perhaps if is simply right just because we don't see it as a parasitic relationship but something given to us, and maybe that is what makes advertising so effective.
