Open­ing an Inter­net brows­er ought to come with a “view­er advi­so­ry” warn­ing: “You are about to be car­pet-bombed with scare-mon­ger­ing adver­tis­ing and the media’s obses­sion with doom and health sto­ries”. That being unlike­ly, I sug­gest those us of old enough to remem­ber it adopt the catch­phrase of MAD Magazine’s Alfred E. Neu­man: “What, me worry?”

A sto­ry head­lined ‘Colos­sal Glob­al Dys­func­tion’ was a blan­ket ref­er­ence to issues faced by the lat­est UN ses­sion, espe­cial­ly Russ­ian wan­na-be-Tsar Vladimir Putin’s taunt about nuclear war.
How­ev­er, we’ve been told the world is about to end ever since it didn’t when the nuclear age and the Cold War arrived, so we can rank it low on the “stressed about meter.”
Of more imme­di­ate con­cern are alleged prob­lems most of us don’t even think about, until they jump out at us from our com­put­er screens while we’re try­ing to make sense of opin­ion pieces that warn of ter­rors like a “com­plete­ly legal G.O.P. plot to destroy Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy”.
Then there was this lede on a New York Times sto­ry: “A pan­el of med­ical experts on Tues­day rec­om­mend­ed for the first time that doc­tors screen all adult patients under 65 for anxiety…”
By def­i­n­i­tion we of the ‘boomer gen­er­a­tion’ are over 65. Does that mean we’re past both­er­ing about? Or are we sim­ply bet­ter equipped to han­dle the real­i­ties of life than our suc­ces­sors? I’m bet­ting the lat­ter, not least because the books worth read­ing weren’t banned as dan­ger­ous for our men­tal and social well-being in our for­ma­tive years.
What­ev­er the case, we’re luck­i­er than our domes­tic pets.The ubiq­ui­tous adver­tise­ment of the month award sure­ly goes to a designed-to-pluck-your-heart and purse strings pro­mo­tion for “The World’s #1 Anx­i­ety reliev­ing pet bed”.
Alleged­ly, no less an august body than Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty has dis­cov­ered that “3 out of 4 pets expe­ri­ence ‘char­ac­ter affect­ing anx­i­ety’ on a dai­ly basis”. If I knew who spon­sored the research, the cyn­ic in me might be (mar­gin­al­ly) inclined to accept the rank­ing and — maybe – fret over the idea that my pets could be on the verge of a ner­vous break­down every twen­ty-four hours.
A quick scroll down the page replaces my doubts with some­thing else to wor­ry about.

                                     DOES IT EVER END?

No doubt not by design, it con­jures up the spir­it of the gad­get adverts of ear­ly TV days that shout­ed; “But Wait! There’s More!”.
For a mere $5 “the com­pa­ny that’s fix­ing shav­ing” is offer­ing a “tri­al” of their lat­est mir­a­cle inven­tion. Does that mean I’ve been doing it wrong for the last 60 years? Is that why so many of my con­tem­po­raries now sport grey­ing beards? If I don’t spend five dol­lars, will I have to fol­low suit?
Anoth­er prod­uct will sup­pos­ed­ly do won­ders for prostate prob­lems. Since we know online adver­tis­ing is “tar­get­ed”, should I be con­cerned about how “they” know I’m at an age where the odds against hav­ing said evils are not in my favour?
The ‘fine print’ “Dis­claimer” at the bot­tom of the advert says: “These state­ments have not been eval­u­at­ed by the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion. Prostate Pro is not intend­ed to diag­nose, treat, cure, or pre­vent any disease.”
Hav­ing worked on both the adver­tis­ing and jour­nal­is­tic sides of news­pa­pers, I claim grounds to opine that a rep­utable media out­fit run­ning an advert for a prod­uct dis­claimed as not sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly ver­i­fied as use­ful, sen­si­ble or safe for your health, men­tal or oth­er­wise, comes down to the rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing equiv­a­lent of the FOX News’ “We report you decide” ethics cop-out.

                                           ALL IS NOT DESPAIR

There is joy amidst it all, how­ev­er. Anoth­er adver­tise­ment that pops up three times every time I open the head­lines for the New York Times online offers “Three Shirts for $89”, with “six months returns”. Tak­en at face val­ue, that means I can be per­ma­nent­ly clothed in high qual­i­ty shirts for $89 just by return­ing and re-ordering.
I see it as a vari­a­tion on what some years ago was ruled to be a per­fect­ly legal scam. The advert offered a “guar­an­teed” way to make $10,000 to any­one who paid $10. Those who did so received a note that said: “Get 1,000 peo­ple to do what you did.”
Anoth­er “health warn­ing” claims that “Every extra pint of beer” will “take fif­teen min­utes off your life”.
Ah, but then again, it will also add fif­teen min­utes of plea­sure. By my reck­on­ing that evens things out.
So you see, Alfred E. Neu­man real­ly did have it right.

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