The Great Sameness

Commercials on TV and radio tend to look and sound like each other.  Most of them insult the viewers, which causes me to detest the products they peddle.  Is this their intent?  If you think I’m the only one repulsed by commercials, watch this video or this one.

There’s no need for commercials to antagonize viewers because commercials can be as creative, entertaining, heartwarming, and inspiring as the shows they interrupt.  The following are several examples:

• Thai Life Insurance

• Berlitz Language Learning Program

• Volkswagen

• Pepsi

• Doritos

• Various (Korean)

• Milk

Most movies are eerily similar to other movies.  Nearly all Hallmark movies and most romantic movies are the same story involving a man and a woman:

1.      They're placed in contact with each other due to circumstance.

2.      They can’t stand each other.

3.      They eventually like each other and fall in love.

4.      They break up due to some misunderstanding.

5.      They resolve the misunderstanding and live happily ever after.

Virtually everything I see or hear around me in fiction, pop music, and politics I’ve seen or heard all my life.

In the 70s, no one under 40 listened to music from the 30s (forty-year-old music).  In the 2020s, people routinely listen to music from the 70s (fifty-year-old music).

Why is this?  One explanation is the following from Rick Beato:

The Death of Music Genres

I fear that ideas will become increasingly homogenized until everything becomes the same.

What women want 

What got me started on this topic was hearing that women, on average, prefer to see movies of either of two genres:

Romantic movies where the female lead ends up

with the handsome, dreamy, sensitive, strong, and rich male lead.

-- or --

Thriller movies where a vulnerable woman

becomes victorious over the male serial killer trying to kill her.

These two cases puzzled me because they are exact opposites: sweet, warm hugs vs. killing the violent, repulsive man with his own knife. Curious about this apparent contradiction, I asked as many women as I dared about this matter.  All of them either agreed with either option above or provided a third:

Action movies with a lead female badass.

Do you see the similarity between all three storylines?  They are, in fact, one:

Women prevailing over men.

Do the majority of women across the world feel they’re under the thumb of men, underappreciated, and mistreated?

What men want

What about men? What storyline do they want in movies?  On average, men want to see anyone prevailing over either,

The bad guys

The opposing team

The opposing company

The neighbors

The in-laws

The out-laws

Aliens from space

Anything else imaginable

Are we looking at a widespread psychological phenomenon where women generally feel they’ve been treated wrongly?

Human Resources

I went to the HR department Head (a woman) of the company I work for and asked her if there were race or gender-based discrimination issues in the company.  She said there weren’t.  She said the company is periodically audited by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to look for cases of gender and race bias in salary or job position.

I did some research.  The following sites don’t say everything is equal, but they say the trends are heading in the right direction.  In each case, look at the charts provided:

• College Enrollment

• College Degrees

• Most Popular Majors

• Gender Pay Gap

• CEO by Race

It's difficult for me to believe things aren’t getting better.  In my opinion, instead of blaming, berating, lashing out with loud voices, and sounding vehemently upset, social influencers should be saying,

“Look how far we’ve come already.

Let’s keep progressing!”

Those older than 50 know that the United States' water, air, and land pollution has been vastly reduced over the decades.  Anti-pollution proponents should make similar positive, affirming statements rather than complain bitterly about how terrible things are.

Remember the growing hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica?  That’s all we heard about in the 70s.  See the following chart.  It hasn’t gotten larger over the past fifty years.  Why isn’t anyone happy about this?

“What do these topics have in common?” you ask.

What's common between them is that people tend to do and think what others around them do and think.  Most people align themselves with the group or society as a whole, whether it’s about entertainment, politics, or science.

We tend to look at our present condition instead of asking ourselves:

• Where are we going?

• What can we become?

• How fast are we going?

• What adjustments can we make?

• What new ideas can we generate?

When driving a car, does the driver look straight down through a hole in the floorboard at the spot of the road the car is on, or does the driver look ahead and steer accordingly?  It appears that most moviemakers, commercial writers, marketing agents, social influencers, and politicians are staring down at their feet.

What should be done about this?

We need to improve at acting more like individuals and less like a group. This requires allowing varying and opposing voices to be heard. Freedom of individual expression should be encouraged. Simply put, the solution to sameness is freedom.

So where does that leave us?  Who’s left to come up with healthier and more creative thoughts or ideas? I can think of one group of people who can (or should) do this routinely. They're called authors.

How do authors come up with new ideas?

I’m not a politician or a social influencer (unless more people read my blog posts than I’m aware), but I know how to generate unique story ideas.

Two ideas for unique story creation are:

• Change the normals.  Write a story where only short people are attractive, or eating is considered antisocial.  Or a novel about people afraid to touch the ground or be seen in public without wearing purple clothing.  Anything out of the ordinary.  Then, develop the reasons for the behavior and pepper those reasons throughout your story.

• Pick a small event in your life and expand the idea forward and backward in time until you have a novel-sized story.  Perhaps you didn’t accept a toy offered to you by your mother’s boyfriend while on the boat he’s living on.  What are the reasons for this, and how does this event change your life and the lives of other family members?

These two ideas create more ideas than I can turn into short stories or novels.

It's the authors

Given that the world relies on authors for its ideas (politicians and corporations follow the group-thinking marketers), we are duty-bound to help our society become better, healthier, wiser, and more hopeful by coming up with fresh ideas.

Let’s honor that obligation and give the world what it needs the most.