It’s often difficult to notice when something is gone, to see what you don’t see. It took me some time to realize that I no longer encounter advertisements for cigarettes in the city. When was the last time I saw the Marlboro Man? Introduced in 1954 to help Marlboro shake its feminine image, the campaign initially included a range of rugged masculine types, but only the cowboy stuck. Not long after the end of the Cold War, the campaign was retired.

Repetition in advertisement exploits the brain’s neuroplasticity, its ability to reorganize itself by forming neural networks. Repeated exposure strengthens connections, establishes and reinforces neural pathways, making them more efficient and automatic. For the addict, moving through public space is treacherous. Images call out, remind me of what I desire, remind me to desire. 

Francis Galton, a eugenicist who happened to be Darwin’s half cousin, used superimposed portraits of multiple people to search for features supposedly shared among members of groups. Does not the algorithm do something similar – blending individuals to arrive at ever more subtle subtypes and directing us along well-worn pathways? 

The landscape the Marlboro Man rides through is free of advertisements. Within the ads, there are no ads. The landscape I see, on the other hand, is littered with extraneous imagery. It is dense, oversaturated, repetitive.