School Assembly, Friday Afternoon, The Auditorium

[bugofjustice.livejournal.com]

"Hello, Fandom High students and faculty! This week's assembly comes to you out of necessity due to the cost of construction. Our speakers today have a focus on corporate sponsorship and are here to show you the good side and bad side of such sponsorship. Now if you'll give our guests your undivided attention, we can begin!"

[OOC: Same deal as last week. General conversation threads are nice and open, reactions to our guests can go in their threads after they have pinged in, and same for Q&A. Thanks to my assembly volunteers for contributing. :)

ETA: The sprinklers were set off here and will be going until shortly after a faculty member busts those responsible. Faculty members? Nail them!]

Comments

Re: Speaker 3: Daria Morgendorffer

[fh_extras]

A very plain-looking college age girl in combat boots and glasses took the floor, and began speaking in a voice that somehow stayed almost entirely monotone. Or at least sounded like it really wanted to be entirely monotone.

"My name is Daria Morgendorffer," she introduced herself. "You may be saying to yourself, she obviously isn't part of any company trying to sell me stuff. And you would be right. Personally, I'd rather die first, but this assembly isn't about that. Thank god. This assembly is about corporate sponsorship, and you've been listening to people telling you what to buy and what to think about what you buy because they tell you to do it. And naturally, being teenagers, a lot of you probably would think having these products in your school is a good idea, just because they're supposed to be cool and popular.

"What you don't know is what the price is. At my high school, we sold out to a company that gave us Ultra Cola, which made us cheap and tawdry enough, and that was before we failed to meet the monetary quota they set for us. True, we had money coming in to fund extracurricular activities. However, we were reduced to soda machines in the hallway- several, actually- and advertisements covering the school so that it looked like we had new school colors. The cheerleaders did get new uniforms, which were very... nice... if you don't take into account the fact that they looked like soda cans and had some difficulty maneuvering in and out of the pyramid. So despite all the ads saying otherwise, even the cheerleaders couldn't manage to look cool while playing walking billboards.

"In the end, all we really got out of the deal was a lot of trouble and bloating. Just because someone tells you something is great doesn't mean it is, and it definitely doesn't mean you should play into it. Listening to people is good if it means you don't walk out into traffic or anything, but you don't need anyone telling you what to like. People really aren't as stupid as advertisers would like you to think. After all, if humans couldn't think for themselves every once in a while, Darwinism would have wiped out the entire species years ago. Or so I'm telling myself this week."