Well I'm not one to let a good argument die, so.
Point taken, I might sound a bit "trite" but I still disagree that it pretty much is a pointless, and endless fight to challenge the "evils of the system" like that. I know all about marketing strategies, and I believe the one valid point the culture-jammers are trying to make is to make the public think about the medium of advertising and what it does to your head. They should teach this in school. But nevertheless, reacting to it by vandalizing or manipulating the ads, however righteous and empowering it may make you feel, does little but endorse the fact that the ads are working. That is the main point of ads is for someone to take notice.
The next point of course is to sell the product and we the consumers play the largest role in what we actually see in advertising (content and quantity). The urban-lifestyle you seem to be stuck with, is stuck in it's own loop of endless consumption. You have to live there to make money, but the money you make gets spent on, and I mean this, utter crap. I live in one of the worst places that I've seen for it, Calgary, Alberta. I do get upset by the amount of money wasted and time spent on this endless consumption.
But getting back on track, the most effective thing to do as a consumer it order to combat the "evils of the system" is be informed, and make good shopping decisions. Go to http://www.davidsuzuki.org/WOL/Challenge/10steps.asp (if you haven't already) and see 10 ways, you Joe consumer can make a difference in a constructive manner. Now David Suzuki designed these 10 steps as simple ways to make the world a cleaner, healthier place in reaction to the recently ratified Kyoto accord in Canada. But they are a good example of taking small steps to lower the amount of money being wasted on crap.
Now the ads will only keep coming if the people keep spending, because somehow the genius's in marketing think the ads really do make people buy the products. If sales go down, the ad budget will decrease along with the other cost-cutting measures, and eventually, may disappear altogether. (Although that would take a long fucking time and the rate this city is spending).
And yes the marches didn't do a fucking thing to stop the war, but they are far from pointless. It is quite vital to come together and protest what you see as intolerable. In a matter so great it won't stop the U.S. from taking action, but to get the people united for their own sake is a great cause. I am not a fucking defeatist, I am a realist. And there is nothing trite about living in the country. I don't know where you live but my country (the land and its people, not the ridiculous institution called "Canada") is a great place, where anyone can afford to live if they would only dispose their lives of all crap consumption.
So I will continue to turn off the tele, and I hope to move back to the country side in a few years (I'm not totally sick of this city yet) and the ads that are everywhere, you don't have to read them and you don't have to think about them, and who cares if you subconscious notices them, it also notices the angle between two walls. But to analyse it can also lead to aggrevation and "losing it". That's about it again.
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