In the last century, the uprising of television and the media has turned leisure time from reading the newspaper into watching the season premiere of yet another new hospital show. Not that reading the newspaper has become obsolete, but its prevalence has significantly diminished since the time of TV. Even more so than television, the Internet has opened up millions of opportunities for entertainment. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, you name it, all of these forms of social networking allow us to be fully aware of where our friends on the other side of the world are going to grab lunch. As a result, with the turn of the 20th century, we turned from being passive viewers of pop culture into active participants in its creation.
Helen Irving, author of the article “Little Elves and Mind Control: Advertising and its Critics”, gives a conservative point of view to the concept of advertising and its purposes. She strongly believes that advertising has created unnecessary needs and wants in 
order to sell products to its viewers. She says that unless we need the product, we must not wish to have it. For example, Coca Cola ads over the years have been shown in almost every context. There are ads showing housewives taking a break from a days’ hard work by sipping on a refreshing bottle of Coke, ads showing Santa with a Coke bottle in his hand with a witty remark underneath saying ‘my gift for thirst’, and ads that just plain and simply state ‘good for every occasion’. What do we know about Coke? It’s mostly sugar and water, with a little bit of food colouring and carbon dioxide in it. There is absolutely no biological need for it to enter our systems, yet Coca Cola is the second most popular international word in the world after ‘ok’. It doesn’t even get underlined in red in Word! My name does, but Coca Cola is apparently perfectly acceptable.
If you line up the Coca Cola advertisements in chronological order, they probably tell the story of time better than any historian in a museum could. Advertising had such an impact on the evolution of this necessity for Coke that the big Coca Cola sign in King’s Cross in Sydney, Australia, brings in over $150 000 a year to its owner just by hanging there. So, I’m afraid it’s advertising 1, Ms. Irving 0.
Another point brought up in the article is that we create the meaning of the message by interpreting it and giving it truth. We are in control! Once again, using the exact same example of Coca Cola, we know that we don’t need it, but we continue to buy it. The fact that our generation has grown up surrounded by TV and magazine ads of people drinking Coke and loving life limits our ability to decide otherwise. If we are constantly bombarded by the same message, we eventually start to agree with it, whether it’s true or not. Advertising 2, Ms. Irving 0. In an ideal world, if everybody had the same opinion about everything, then yes, I believe that we could be in control of what the message of an ad truly states. But at a time when there are hundreds of products on the market trying to make our smiles whiter and our hair smoother, there is very little left to interpretation. We live in a capitalist society and culture, in effect, makes the decision between no name and brand name for us.
SoLetMeEntertainYou 