My father flips channels every time a show goes into a commercial break, searching for a station that does not, as he puts it, exploit viewers with overly long advertisements. We have the right not to be fed so much crap, he would mumble to himself.

Yet he compulsively buys crap that advertisements sell. Thanks to Home TV Shopping and ads promoting the organic lifestyle, he now has an overpriced plastic foldable table, bottles of virgin coconut oil, various pills and herbal supplements for all kinds of sicknesses (psychosomatic or not), new ailments that he had never before considered as ailments, and new habits.

He, of course, is by no means an isolated case. We complain and yet we watch and digest what are fed to us through our television screens. We are convinced that we all have dandruff and therefore must use special shampoo. We are told that even the young are already prone to signs of aging. We know all the delivery hotlines of all the big fast food chains. We have memorized all the words to the jingles used in TV ads, starting from way back when we were little. We reminisce our childhood by recalling shows we religiously watched as we were growing up.

It is not surprising, then, that television is used to sell not only products but ideas, or more specifically, to sell ideas of contentment. Corporations that hold a monopoly over basic services tell us that they are doing a good job. ‘Ordinary’ people talk about how their lives have improved and how they have prospered. Like all advertisements, these are tributes to themselves, made to convince viewers that they are satisfied with what exists and with what is being done for them. And as in all advertisements, truths are stretched, exaggerated, and manipulated. The same products are being sold, albeit in more attractive packaging.

These kinds of advertisements convey an irony: if indeed we are content; if we are being provided good and fairly priced services and if we are experiencing progress and prosperity, why then do we need to be told about them? The time of airing reveals their true purpose: ads praising Meralco and NLEX, for example, were shown during the time that they were enforcing price hikes. The ad claiming that ordinary Filipinos are experiencing prosperity was aired after the government’s claim that the economy is improving was met with much dubiousness.

This charade is not limited to advertisements, nor to television for that matter. We are sold and force-fed manipulated truths all the time. Crucial details are omitted. If we were to believe only what state-sponsored infomercials, press releases, and news programs in government-owned stations allow us to know, then our economy is soaring, corruption in our country is a myth, political killings do not occur, all so-called acts of terror are done by rebel groups, poverty and unemployment have been alleviated. We thus live amidst strange coincidences; numerous disappearances are not in any way linked to the government, witnesses, testimonies, and hard evidence against the military do not exist, explosions are mere accidents that coincidentally divert the public’s attention from growing hostility towards the government, groups calling for an ouster form a mere minority.

Satisfaction has itself become a commodity we are expected to consume. Skepticism has therefore become essential – there is always a catch; important details are always left out.

It has become insulting how we are expected to buy such absurdities. We are told what to know and how to feel, yet force-fed lies and half-truths are always hard to swallow. Perhaps we need merely to remember that we are the ones holding the remote control.

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