Numb Brain

“What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea. Resilient… highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain, it’s almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed, fully understood, that sticks. Right in there somewhere” - Cobb, Inception

It is 07:48pm, you are having your dinner on your own, and of course you are staring at your phone, while eating. You are watching Mr.Beast’s recent video on YouTube, and as usual, right when you are getting engaged with the content, an ad pops up. These 5 seconds feels like lifetime to you, after clicking the skip button, you wonder why companies spend millions of dollars on these ads, when everyone just skips them.

According WARC, global advertising spending estimated to surpass $1 trillion in 2024. Ads are effective at planting a seed of information, even though many people think that ads doesn’t affect them and it is just waste of money to spend $1 million for an ad in Times Square for a day.

The brain is like computer and information is a program, that usually runs in the background, without letting you notice it. And if you think about it, your decisions, your thoughts and your actions are heavily driven by the information that you have received by listening to someone, reading a book, watching a movie or seeing an ad

Since information has such a big impact on our lives, it can work for us or against us, but it is usually the latter. Human brain is very smart organ, but not smart enough to filter out the received information. You cannot “unthink” or forget information by your own will.

And the problem is that, we are not selecting or even paying attention to the information that we are receiving. We are just consuming. Through TikTok videos and Instagram reels, in a bus, in a bed, in a dinner, non-stop. We are equipped with endless screens, big headphones and now trying to put whole computer on our heads making it easier for the media to control us

Even worse, our brains are used to receive endless amount of information, it craves for it. When we are not receiving information that doesn’t require deep processing and thinking we feel bored. So to avoid that feeling, we just keep scrolling, keep watching and keep listening

Remember that you are not just what you eat. You are what you absorb