Michael Holme
Grand exploitation
I've lived in the same Manchester suburb since 1997/98. The city centre has changed much in that time. Businesses come. Businesses go; but in the last few years, an explosion of flat and apartment building has occurred in it: thousands.
It's one thing to seek perceived uniqueness by the social encouragements of having tattoos, but this following list of common denominators surely can't offer people much in terms of difference: German cars, lip inflation, Botox, teeth whitening, prowess in mixed sex gyms, and having victim-hoods to fashion brands. These are only small factors now, when you consider the way that city centre living is so powerfully drawing people in.
It mustn't be apparent to people, but the strength of advertising on television and the internet alone, is most clearly going to be enhanced by having customers inadvertently, and physically, attract many more customers quickly, simply because they all live in a highly concentrated space, and are daily human adverts for the desires, wants and freedoms from frustrations all around them. They're it: part of a "grass is greener" metropolis, the perfect capitalistic consumer scenario, and one which the orchestrators of (perhaps it's a "human zoo") are loving to watch its critical mass being approached.