Weed: The More You Smoke, The Less You Care
"That's right," says the target audience drifting by.
"Who wants to acknowledge blight?"
. . . shut down liquor store, shut down Chinese restaurant, shut down (long shut down) corner grocery store. . . .open townhomes, open pink-painted church, busy bus stop. . . .
"Isn't 'not caring' the point?"
"Kinda like Zoloft? To get your cares and worries down to a place where they don't eat you up inside, to be that happier little bubble-guy on the commercial who can stop freaking out - being 'anxious' - long enough to 'function'?"
"And, isn't that an exaggeration, to claim that the effects of one drug are a cumulative negative spiral, while others are only going to give you 'dry mouth, insomnia, sexual side effects, diarrhea, nausea and sleepiness'?"
At any rate, my offering is that the message here is designed to fail. It doesn't make sense: it's not presenting a horrifying consequence; there's nothing all that terrible to be avoided. It even stumbles near promoting what it's trying to put down.
Lately, random construction-laden trailers have been parked here in this lot. The billboard is on the side of a long-vacant-looking building next door that is across from the Longfellow Heights neighborhood redevelopment area.
The billboard used to promote one of those companies that buys shabby homes, and earlier, it used to remind people who happen to be felons not to use firearms.
Someone was shot and killed there during the latter's display, when the liquor store was still open.
If the threat of a five-year prison mandate is not enough to change someone's behavior, how is "you're not gonna care!" supposed to have any influence?
They're not gonna care!
Believe me, I hardly do.
For Real
(Still looking for who is "For Real" campaign. . . .not completely certain shot person in parking lot died; had clipping from news of "ironic" 2003 or 2004 photo showing cops investigating scene under billboard, but it has been recycled during an office Feng Shui spree.)
4 comments:
I passed that billboard and thought the exact same thing. I think it's a conspiracy. Whoever paid for the billboard wants people to be stoned all the time.
Ditto. We drove by an identical one on 71 and I said, wow.. sounds appealing?
I looked for the "For Real" campaign people, but their website is defunct and I can find no references in the Encyclopedia of Associations to them or in news databases. It's curious. Their foundation couldn't have been well-funded. I suspect a church.
Yeah, when I first saw that Weed billboard I thought it was a joke like...Smoke Weed and you'll stop giving a shit! Terribly ineffective PSA.
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