I could not stare into someone’s eyes and put my hand on theirs without counting the milliseconds until I could return to myself. I craved breaking the pregnant silence with small talk or empathetic laughter. What was a beautiful, rare and unique moment of human connection for many others, was my own personal form of torture.

Affect is the stirring of emotions. To be affected by something means that we are touched, warmed, distressed or impressed upon in some emotional way by external stimuli. The exercise above however did nothing to warm my heart and made me question the very idea of human connection and why we are so obsessed with staring into someone’s eyes as if that will somehow provide us the keys to their humanity and their soul.

As a marketing student however I am well aware of the profound and central role affect plays in selling anything from petrol to underwear to kitchen knives. We are at the mercy of our emotions as human beings and can be convinced that objects and things are the key to accessing an idea, feeling or narrative that we long to be a part of thanks to ideological condition from the minute leave the womb.

This advertisement recently went viral around my social media platforms and created whimpering messes of myself and many of my friends. It strikes me as beautiful and hopeful that in a world of Tinder, eHarmony, RSVP and countless other organised, impersonal, web-based dating and matchmaking services that we can still subscribe to the narrative and the affect of ‘falling in love’. What strikes me as ridiculous is that this is an ad about chewing gum.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLpDiIVX0Wo