Travel Day 1086 – Bangkok, THAILAND
When I was taking the skytrain yesterday from the embassy to Siam Square, I noticed something again that struck me already a few days ago: Bangkok was the future…
Commercials at Siam Square, Bangkok
Bangkok did obviously feel like the future already when I arrived from Nepal, but even after living in New York City for many years, Bangkok felt still like the future and the whole city felt in fact more modern than any other place in the US or in Europe I had ever been to before. But being modern and representing the future was not necessarily a good thing in this case and I personally found my experiences rather annoying and disturbing than anything else…
My first conscious contact with the future was when I was waiting for the train at Surasak station and I realized that each platform had screens mounted above them, playing a constant loop of really annoying commercials in vision and sound. Now, I never really minded the still commercials, but even the quietly moving images in NYC which started to appear on top of every subway entrance were a great distraction and disturbance for me. But here there was also sound added to the experience, making it absolutely impossible to escape these annoying commercials…
Disturbing Screens inside the Trains
Once the train arrived and I was off to Siam Square I felt a great relief from the disturbing sounds, but unfortunately not for very long. To my great surprise the train car had also screens mounted above each row of seats, displaying a continuation of the endless loop of commercials in vision and sound. Once more I felt that especially the annoying sounds were a violation to my privacy since it was absolutely impossible to escape this experience and my attention was constantly drawn towards the screens…
When looking at the other passengers, it seemed that everyone else was num enough to not even mind or bother. So I found some passengers just staring at the screens as if they were hypnotized, while the rest of the passengers were staring at their personal screens in form of their smart phones. It was actually unbelievable to notice that none of the passengers was present in the train car, literally every single person seemed to be brain drained and drawn away to some far away commercial reality…
Personal Screens of Passengers, Bangkok
But the worst of it all was yet to come when I arrived at Siam Square. Not only did I notice that our entire train from top to bottom was covered in huge commercials as well. Then there were screens mounted next to every entrance door of the train, displaying more disturbing distractions, there were also screens mounted on the columns, screens outside the train station and of course there were a lot of fixed commercials as well. It was all so wrong on so many levels that I left me completely speechless at the platform…
Not only was everything around me trying to tell us to consume as much as possible, but also did this mean that if this was supposed to be the future, then I had to say that I really hated it. All I could think of was to try to avoid this means of transportation altogether and especially Siam Square. It was actually really scary and I had to stand in awe for a while to take-in all the disturbing commercial madness that was pouring down on me with the force of a huge truck….
More Screens by the Station, Bangkok
Strangely enough, nobody else seemed to bother and even worse, nobody else seemed to even notice what was going on. But what really surprised me was to see how sophisticated the commercial system actually was. It appeared to me that the moving images on the screens were somehow synchronized with the commercials covering the trains. So a white train would provoke white commercials, a yellow train would be matched by yellow commercials and so forth…
For me this was all unbelievable and scary, especially while thinking that the amount of disturbing screens would only increase in the future. If this was really going to be our path for the future, I knew already that I would much rather remain in the past…
White Train matching white Screens
Yellow Train matching yellow Screens
Lion on the Train matching the Screens
Some of the passengers on the train might have been reading your blog, Dennis! ;o)
PS: You should go to Sao Paolo instead: “The 4th largest City in the World has no Outdoor Advertising – In 2006 Sao Paulo, Brazil, banned outdoor advertising”
Well, I guess if they were reading my blog I couldn’t really say anything, but I would still prefer they would do so at home when they have time to focus on it… : )
Thanks for sharing Sao Paulo’s approach on outdoor advertising. Surprisingly enough but it seems actually really progressive to protect ones citizens from all the disturbing and distracting commercial advertisements. Many other cities, especially Bangkok and some other Asian cities should take this a great example on how to tackle our more and more commercial future…