Its not a scene from the horror film, its just a billboard glowing in the dark, at the bus stop outside the innovation centre. Yes, you must have noticed these billboards appearing at the bus stops in school in the past two weeks. These commercial propaganda tools are slowly creeping into our school! Much like those billboards you see everywhere else in Singapore, they have finally found their way into the school. I wonder if it is the school's or LTA's idea to put these billboards in the campus bus stops. Maybe soon you'll see them appearing at canteens or tutorial rooms and LTs as well. (horror horror!!!)
It's alarming how Singapore has become highly commercialised. Other than at the bus stops, advertisements are appearing everywhere, in your face. On the road, you see ads everywhere too. There are cabs with ridiculous billboards on their roofs. Cow tails appear at the back of the buses, and now cows are also appearing along the expressways. The interior of trains are also taken over by adverts. Other than the usual allocated places, they are also on your seats, on the floor, even the grabbing poles of the trains are not spared. Along the underpass, the two walls are also filled with billboards. Don't the billboards along Orchard underpass give you the annoying sinking feeling everytime the zip down and changes the ads? Some ads genius invented the billboards with audio. These billboards will keep repeating some short clip of the album they are promoting. And there are also those along the train platforms. Besides telling you the arrival time of the next train, they are also play irritating commercial. Do you remember the "Best Bet" commercial they kept playing sometime last year? It nearly drive me mad when I sat at the platform for 15mins waiting for a friend.
Perhaps advertisements are not all bad. I must give credit for those well-thought commercials. As a layman, I would consider them as great art work. However, they should appear only at appropriate places. Commuters should be given some peace of mind when they travel. Everywhere we turn, we are bombarded by some message in these ads. Places like schools should be spared from these propaganda. "Well done IHG teams!", "Good luck for the exams!", "Espirit de Volontaires!", "Trekking to Mount K...". I will prefer these banners from CCAs or JCRCs any day.
Unique signboards and billboards do tell us about the culture of the society. It is also a way of expressing our creativity. Why don't we just keep them in the city areas, where they really fit in well with the environment?
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