REPEAT? REPEAT? REPEAT? REPEAT? REPEAT?

 REPEAT? REPEAT? REPEAT? REPEAT? REPEAT?

I don’t know about you but mindless repetition kills me. I think we have been assaulted by the media in many ways by annoying repetition. I often watch a baseball game on my computer and the endless repetition of the same commercial is driving me over the edge. Yesterday, I counted between seventy and eighty repetitions of the same fifteen-second commercial advertising Lotto Max tickets. Between every half-inning and every change of pitchers the annoying message blasts out of my speakers at a louder volume than regular programming. All I know for sure is that this form of audio abuse simply turns me off from buying the product being touted.

Another terribly mind-numbing repetition is evident if you listen to any popular music these days. Some songs either have a five -word lyric eg “I will love you forever” and it is repeated endlessly without interruption for the entire song. This is music? Or some musical refrain like na na na na, na na na na can add to your listing pleasure ad nauseum. I have reached a point if there is no pleasant melody or the words are so garbled that I can’t understand them, I shut the music(?) off.

I believe that the advertising empire is built upon the theory that the more times you hear an advertisement the more you will remember the product and hence purchase it at the first chance you get. It is intended to be commercial brainwashing. It works just the reverse in my senior universe. If you drive me crazy with your non-stop repetition, then you can be sure I will never consider the product. How about trying to be creative, subtle and interesting for a change?

Another annoying example are the people who post five to ten entries on FaceBook each day with some variation of the same message. I have one “friend” who posts “nice little heart-warming slogans” day after day. Another is a vegan who regularly posts of the evils of eating meat with rich illustrations of our cruelty and abuse of animals. I have no problem with either of the sentiments, but overkilling the message is a very poor technique for impressing me. My mind generally responds with a “Get a life” message to these authors. If I replied to each of their posts with my comment, I would become one of them!

On the positive side, repetition is an essential practice in learning some new facts, procedures and skills. However, this kind of repetition is usually quiet and does not intrude into the space of others. If it is noisy repetition, you will quickly become my annoying enemy.

As I matured, I found that repetition to aid learning was not as successful as it used to be. In high school, I learned French vocabulary by writing each word five times on a piece of paper. Years later, when I was trying to learn Turkish vocabulary, I had to copy each word at least ten times in order to remember it. I recently decided that I wouldn't even try to learn Spanish when I went to Mexico. I learned the ten basic phrases in order to get by and then utilized a translation app on my smartphone. Old repetition techniques have become obsolete when learning a language. 

In summary, repetition drives me crazy. I hate it when commercials repeat over and over. I don’t like the repetitive lyrics of modern music. Mindless repetition is completely annoying. I won’t repeat this message again. Repetition is maddening. Don’t repeat things when you talk to me. Have I made my point?