Am I the only one with this problem? When I am told repeatedly to do something (or, perhaps more to the point, to not do something), my immediate response is to desire to do the opposite. When the pastor snaps his fingers in the sermon and says “Look right here!” my knee-jerk reaction is to look away. When a particularly invasive TV ad tells me to “ask your healthcare provider about this NOW!” I make a mental note to never ask about it.
Well, I’m in Korea, which has turned out to be, TV-wise here on base, Land of the PSA (Public Service Announcement). Instead of commercials littering the breaks between TV programs, we get told what to do and not do, and it covers the gamut, from making wills to not chewing tobacco to spending quality time with the family… I made a list the other night but it was three pages long and still growing as I kept the TV on, so I gave up in disgust.
Like anything in the military, it’s the official government-endorsed public health-type information, which is generally one or two trend-cycles behind the current scientific studies of the relevant subject. For instance, we’re still doing situps (though as a cosmetic change they call them “crunches”) on our PT test, though any fitness guru could tell you that they’re probably more harmful than good for a body. Also they’re behind the curve on the whole cholesterol thing–we’re still being told never to eat eggs and fat, while the rest of the world has moved on from that outdated set of instructions.
But I digress. The problem with all this is that those preachy, well-meaning but correspondingly maddening pseudo-commercials have the effect of making me want to go out and do exactly the opposite. I swear, someone could probably get me to go out and… skydive (something that I’m not particularly interested in doing), if they just followed me around and told me how bad it is to skydive and how you should cut all skydiving out of your life as quickly as possible. It’s a weird knee-jerk response, but if I’m feeling this way, surely there must be other people who do, too!
Advertisers in the business world seem to have worked out the correct formula–make a person want to do something instead of heavyhandedly telling them to do something. It’s a pity that our disseminators of public health information aren’t more savvy to this concept! As it is, I’ll have to keep having the conversation with my id that goes like this: “I know that was obnoxious, but you really don’t want to chew tobacco / drive without a seatbelt / do drugs / etc … So don’t be so malleable that the annoying PSA makes you do it!” Because seriously, I have to remind myself in this way just about every time I hear one of these ads.
(Every now and then I notice how much I hate being told what to do and wonder why, exactly, I chose a military career! 
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… Wow, I just searched on YouTube and there are lots of these for your viewing enjoyment. Apparently disliking AFN PSAs is a common experience…
Posted by Kjirstin 
