I really don’t like M and Ms
Not the taste of them, I don’t really have much of an opinion about that one way or another, they’re just another sweet.
It’s true that the advertising campaign irritates me, the characters they’ve chosen. I can’t stand the red M&M. He thinks he’s cool because he’s rude and obnoxious. He’s just rude and obnoxious. I don’t like the way the yellow M&M lets the Red M&M push him around. He needs to learn some self-respect. Moreover, I don’t like the unspoken assumption that he deserves this treatment because he’s not very bright.
Neither of these things would move me to blog, however.
And then I saw this:
This is a machine advertising the fact it can’t sell M&M’s. It’s sitting there using electricity to tell you it doesn’t work. Why don’t they just turn it off?
Seeing this made me realise something, something that moved me to write this. Not because I wanted to do one of those angry rants you see popping up on Facebook, but because I really really hate M&M’s and all they stand for, and you should do too.
You might say that they’re only just sweets, but actually that’s exactly why you should be angry. Because they’re just sweets. Sweets with a huge advertising budget.
Is it really that important that we spend all that money, not on education or libraries, but on advertising mediocre chocolate? Because let’s face it, if the chocolate was that good they wouldn’t have to advertise it. But because it’s a mediocre product up against other mediocre products they have to pour money and resources into getting people to buy it. And while they do that the good stuff is drowned out by the noise.
That out of order M&M machine, sitting there taking up space and guzzling electricity and advertising its own shittiness is emblematic not only of the food industry, but of the music industry and the publishing industry and any other industry that elevates the mediocre in order to sustain itself.
That machine isn’t just wasting resources. It’s stopping other, better products occupying that space. To all those original voices out there, struggling to be heard, never forget: that M&M machine is one of the things stopping you.
