"The public relations industry, which essentially runs the elections, is applying certain principles to undermine democracy which are the same as the principles that applies to undermine markets. The last thing that business wants is markets in the sense of economic theory. Take a course in economics, they tell you a market is based on informed consumers making rational choices. Anyone who’s ever looked at a TV ad knows that’s not true. In fact if we had a market system an ad say for General Motors would be a brief statement of the characteristics of the products for next year. That’s not what you see. You see some movie actress or a football hero or somebody driving a car up a mountain or something like that. And that’s true of all advertising. The goal is to undermine markets by creating uninformed consumers who will make irrational choices and the business world spends huge efforts on that. The same is true when the same industry, the PR industry, turns to undermining democracy. It wants to construct elections in which uninformed voters will make irrational choices. It’s pretty reasonable and it’s so evident you can hardly miss it."

I agree. What's funny is that even the common pro-advertising defense of "what, you think people are being tricked? that they're stupid? that you know better than them?" is actually a manipulation in itself.

It's a Trojan Horse of insecurity disguised as a compliment. Like when a guy who is negging goes "wow even though you talk so much it's really interesting!" The whole point of that is to inject the insecurity of "I talk too much?!"

In the same way, the purpose of 'you think people are stupid?' is to make people feel insecure about the idea of them being susceptible to advertising, because 'only stupid people are.'

Advertising is literally applied psychology, at levels where billions of dollars are at stake. Our economy - and society - is based on specialization. Specialization is held together by a trust that if you inherently become ignorant about some stuff via spending your time learning a lot about one thing, the guy you hire to help you with the thing you don't know about isn't going to take advantage of you.

When the advert agency exec hires someone to do his plumbing, or his gardening, or teach his kids, or goes to buy food at the supermarket, or gets his taxes done, or whatever else, he's trusting that the person he's hiring is not abusing his trust, because he doesn't know if they are, because he's specialized in something else.

This trust is essential for society. That's why we have laws and business reviews and whatever else: people breaking that trust endangers society.

When all these people who make up the framework that allows the advertising exec to be able to have his job don't abuse his trust, and he goes along and makes an ad that deliberately betrays theirs, either through overt lying or some slimy plausible deniability grey area 'well we didn't say x meant y, but our focus group told us that if we presented x in a certain way, it would make you think it meant y' or whatever else, the dude is

1. delaying people from achieving whatever goal they thought buying the thing was gonna help them achieve

2. throws them WAY off course if they don't realize what's going on ('huh, it didn't work! maybe I need more')

3. threatens the network of trust that literally holds modern society together

Sure, it's legal, but there have been legal immoral things and illegal moral things. That's not a measure of good and bad.

I hate this shit. It's disgusting to me. Fucking disgusting.

If corporations are people, they're sociopaths.

The worst part is that with a politician, they can straight up just lie.

Of course if they're bad at it they can get in trouble, but if they're the talented 'grey area' plausible deniability douchebag, they can lie their way directly into the White House.

Sure, after some amount of time in power, they might get found out and lose their power in the House/Senate, but any amount of time as president is more time than zero, which is what happens to the guy who doesn't lie his way in.

Then, he can finish his presidency, make millions off of some book deal, and be loved by auditoriums of admirers for the rest of his life.

Thought about this stuff this weekend and I don't like it. I don't like it at all.

Even a lot of "culture" isn't culture. People naturally look up to leaders, like celebrities. Pay the celebrity to wear your product. Now people who are "cool" need your product to avoid not being cool anymore. So they buy it from YOU. Then other aspiring people see the cool people wearing your product, and now THEY buy it from you. Pretty soon, it becomes what makes you fashionable. All because a celebrity was paid to wear it.

Then this shit, where people buy into associations of luxury items with status and class, filters all the way down to the inner city kids, who feel absolutely worthless, and they see all the people who are viewed as valuable by society flaunting these status symbols, so they pursue them instead of pursuing stuff that would RATIONALLY bring them respect, and ironically it worsens their problem.

Then the rich white people, that caused the whole cycle to start, laugh at them and call them "stupid" for buying into it. Newsflash: they're copying you. If they're stupid, it's because you're stupid too.

So yeah let's be narcissistic idiots and sustain a culture that persuades kids in Oakland to kill each other over Jordan shoes.

But no nobody has anything to do with it. Nobody has any affect. Nothing is connected. Go back to American Idol. Keep buying the product that's gonna make you happy, or respected, or part of a movement, or have friends, for no apparent logical reason.

Of course, it won't. But you'll buy into it, because hey we trust others in society, right? Yay specialization! It's not like anyone would abuse that trust! Everyone's doing it! You think too much! You're like the guy who did extra homework for fun!

fucking scumbags

tl dr: I dislike the idea of "buyer beware"