You get on a bus and expect to see ads. They tell you what to think. What to like. What to buy. What it is you desire. They don’t really know these things about you. But they treat you like they do and it works.

That’s how we’ve become what we are.

We didn’t always want to own a certain brand of clothes. We wouldn’t even know what that brand was if it weren’t for ads being stuffed in our face with beautiful people who are photoshopped into being.

We wouldn’t know what expensive watch is best to impress strangers with if it weren’t for ads.

We wouldn’t know which school we wanted to attend until the very moment smiling young faces holding books or degrees tell you which program you’ve been waiting for your whole life.

It goes on. And on. I don’t want to bore you with the details.

Over time these change. They have to. When the economy is in rough shape these change as well.

Take this bus for example. There’s space on the bus for 20 ads. 10 on each side. There are only two. One for Tim Horton’s and one for Paladin Security.

The crumbling economy sprinkles rubble on everyone. Except these two and their advertising budgets.

Now I know what these ads want us to be: under-qualified try-hards and wanna-be’s who spend their days hyped up on cheap caffeine that only tastes good when you cut it with thick cream and dump absurd amounts of sugar in like you’re a first-world country disposing of your garbage and plastics off the shore of a third-world country.

The future looks great. At least we know what’s expected of us. I tell myself that has to count for something.