Advertisers have stolen

I'm starting to think that advertisments have stolen our culture in order to use it to sell stuff, so I'm putting together a list of things that ads have stolen.
If an advertisment is saying something true about a product, then it doesn't make it to the list. If the element in the ad has nothing to do with the product, it is an element of culture that is stolen

1. Personal witness and testimony. Obviously lost in early advertising
2. Colour- eg recent Telstra ad- lots of nice bright colours, nothing to do with product
3. Expressions of joy. Bombarded with the promise of individual and communal joy from products, which ultimately go unfullfilled, ads have stolen our ability to express joy
4. Sex- don't need to explain this one
5. Copious amounts of music. You know, I don't know many pieces of music that were written as responses to a commercial object or service. Most of them seem to be written as responses to other real things in life. Yet advertisments have stolen them, hollowed them of their original reference and instead used them to refer to a product. They thus steal our ability to use that music as a referent of and refelection on human experience.
6. Irony- the much loved response of baby-boomers to corporate pressure has itself been subsumed into the advertising scheme (Think esp Carltons 'Big Ad'). Ahaha we think, they are taking the piss out of themselves, I must go and buy that product.



This list will grow as I can be bothered