Sex Sells!

[Richter]

But what is left is that, eventually, the act of sex itself is rendered meaningless - emotional fulfillment is now achieved through consumption, so sex is now strictly physical. Furthermore, the emotional act of love is left without a proper release - people fall in love but have no way to express that love in a meaningful manner. Sex is meaningless, and receiving a gift from someone is never quite the same as treating yourself.

There's probably more.

Well broken down. It almost sound like in the end, it isn't sex that's being sold, but maturbation.  The appeal, the hook, and the presentaiton is all sex, but the sale and the reciept of goods (outside of the gift recieving case you mentioned) is done by oneself only for oneself.  Like the advertising is only saying "this is what you want, go out to get yourself what you want." 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

The problem is that deep down it scares us. We have so many walls to put up in front of ourselves that when it's finally time to break them down we chicken out.

What scares us?

Zombies with gigantic erections.

[Fujikoma]

Maybe it doesn't need to be pointed out, but it sounds like Pavlovian conditioning to me. The repeated stimuli over time of watching the idiot box eventually alters how you feel about the product by assosciating the stimuli with the product itself until eventually, the original stimuli is no longer essential and you salivate every time you hear a bell... The web is so twisted and intricate, and clouds so many minds with consumer culture filth that the only way out is to swear off television and possibly undergo a traumatic chemical experience... At least, it helped ME a little. I finally saw through the haze because of a few of such experiences, even though I hadn't watched television for years.

All that junk just sort of accumulates over time, all those hotwired and short circuited neurons accumulate white matter and eventually become impossible to repair. It's sad, but that's the way it works, IMO.

[Brotep]

Vex, your idea sounds vaguely Reichian. Anyway, we're touching on a lot of interrelated issues here, and it's dfficult to respond to everything at once. I will try.

I don't think the basis of advertising is sexual or orgasmic.
Sexiness has a psychological component, something neither necessary nor sufficient for sex itself.

While advertising has plenty to do with sexiness it has little to do with sex.
I don't think commercials are ruining our orgasms. However, they might create an expectation of constantly being entertained.

So perhaps that is the reason marriage fails. That, and we are taught to believe in, seek out, and expect love, but we do not really know how to love.

[Pope Lecherous]

Maybe the failure rate of marriages and other long term relationships in the West is not entirely due to a "cultural shift away from marriage," or simply the way we see everything as disposable these days. Maybe it is also a result of decades of shifting sexual attention away from each other and onto the consumption of material goods. If we have a pandemic inability for commitment, might it be because we are truly unable to find any emotional gratification in commitment? Not just because we are lazy and selfish, but because we have been socially programmed to reject emotional attachment as satisfying, or even real?

I think up to now this point, above your others, can be developed a lot further.  Interesting Stuff.  Whether consciously or subconsciously (as you stated) marketing has always toyed and prodded people's sex drive/libidio etc.  But to hijack the libido to steer a person towards becoming a consumer zombie?   ... i'm not really buying it.

From what i've traditionally felt/observed advertising gave the potential consumer an opportunity to become more desirable sexually... a kind of enhancement guaranteed if you purchase X.  Such an advertising scheme seems to target normal evolutionary/biological drives.

Pope Lecherous
--batin' since he was a toddler cuz of teh ads