'You've Been Hustled, Baby'

‘You’ve Been Hustled, Baby’ --

No matter the education level or common sense IQ, one thing is certain...we don’t like to be fooled. Nor do we like to be: hoodwinked, tricked, hustled, taken or conned. Yet we fall prey because as P.T. Barnum put it... "A sucker is born every minute."

Advertising has fried our brains. Ad agencies are paid millions to cajole, psyche, fool and even scare us into buying decisions we would not otherwise make.

Take beer. The commercials tout everything...lifestyle, born on dates, bottle temperatures, package design and processing methods...everything, but how the beer tastes. And isn’t taste the reason to buy beer? Seems not. We’ve fallen hook, line and hops for bad tasting froth.

Another example of being duped is ‘Safeguard’ soap. The product was touted as ‘...the smallest soap in the house.’ The fact of the matter is the soap dissolved faster than other soaps, period. Not because of high demand.

Making matters worse, ad agencies, through commercials, have degraded words that once held meaning. Words like genuine, original, real or the best. They no longer have meaning. Everything is the original, the genuine, the real or the best.

With our economy is headed toward a second recession, we need to be wiser, smarter and thriftier about our spending decisions. Lets not be ‘suckered’ by fancy products hyped with meaningless words.

This never happens to you? Why is your toothbrush slathered with paste? (when a dab will do). ‘You’ve been hustled, baby.’