Do it! Do it! Do it!

I vary my entertainment, from fact to fiction, from things in the past to those in the present to those in the future, from reading stuff on paper to reading stuff on TV to reading stuff on computers. (What can I say, I dabble.) In varying that entertainment, I come across varied examples of how these entertainments are paid for. Read recently about ways advertisers persuade a person to shop for their products. Was reminded of an insurance sales campaign from a trip overseas, one full of young men and women with suits and toothy grins, all eager to make their numbers in any way possible. Apparently, gratitude has fallen under the umbrella of trendy, but let me try it anyway - I thank those smiling, sweet-voiced young men and women for encouraging my inquisitiveness. I'm sorry, did you really just ask me to max out a credit card to buy insurance I'm not going to use? Excuse me, did you really think that having more salespeople turn up the figurative heat was going to change my answer? And did you bank on the relative who bought insurance to make me want to follow that relative's example? As I read through that article on methods of persuasion in advertising, I looked back on that experience and ticked number after number off the list on that article. On the flip side of that gratitude, the side that makes a thing good apart from its value as a trend and hashtag, thanks to that recent discovery for an article that provides another means to examine current and future experiences. And since product placement makes ads out of entertainment itself, I'm sure there'll be many more examples to examine.