Have you ever considered the fact that posters are the most bloody ridiculous product in the world? You go to the shop, choose something with an image of something you like, then you go home and put it on your wall. So you can look at it and think "yes, I like this thing." Seriously, it's fairly pointless wearing a t-shirt with your likes on it (he types, wearing a Jack Daniel's t-shirt, one of four he owns) just so you can identify yourself to other likers of that thing, but when you hang your likes on your wall you might be going a bit far. Are you concerned you might forget that you like that thing that you like? Perhaps you're concerned prospective sexual partners might be repelled if they don't see at least one Bob Marley poster in your room that lacks a single reggae album.
Now it could be argued (rather correctly) that you're actually hanging the emotion associated with branding on your wall. For example Jack Daniel's spend millions on being seen as just the right amount of decadent. Not having enough money or social skills to come off as decadent wherever I go I decide that wearing a shirt that proclaims "I am decadent and excessive, honest" will suffice. This is to give our desired image to everyone else, while really I'm just letting everyone else know I own a JD t-shirt, so I'm probably a bit of a knob. But when we buy posters the intended audience is ourselves. We pay money to try and convince ourselves we are the kind of people we want to be, when really we are the kind of people who think we can buy a new self-image.
Having said all this, I should probably mention I have posters on my wall, I'm just not under the illusion that I'm not a bit of a moron for having them.
2 comments:
By the way, it's only really usual for teenagers and 'young people' to have more than one poster on their wall. This is usually someone or something that they really admire and are attracted to. Therefore, for those of us young enough for these types of posters, it is mainly to fuel our own fantasies that we have them.
However, I think your point about showing our tastes off is more what happens when you are older (from what I can guess from programmes such as 'Friends') and therefore it suddenly becomes important that you have the right poster for the people you want to hang out with to see you as the right sort of person.
I personally have quite a few posters, though none of them have made it to my wall yet as I'm just too lazy to decide which one goes where.
Yeah, it's usually only acceptable for older people to have posters of they're framed. And there are legitimate reasons for having posters there are a lot of people who buy posters because they want to be the kind of people who are interested in the subjects present.
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