"They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. Fuck that."

submitted by EndlessSunflowers from i.imgtc.ws

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[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

People working in marketing are probably experts in psychology or know how to influence people. We the people are neither experts nor are we aware of how we can be influenced. What we are, is, victims of psychological manipulation. The only control people have is to close their ears and or eyes when an ad is encountered, assuming the people are aware that the ad could potentially manipulate them.

Laws are not the same as ethics. There was a time a lot of things were legal which we now consider illegal; slavery was legal, genocide was legal. Just because something is legal, it does not mean it is right or ethical. I know that what we have now cannot be easily compared with genocide or slavery or rape or whatever but, it still is a big deal.

If we want to talk about making the money change hands, we need to find a better way than getting into people's heads and making their lives miserable.

[–]HopeThatHalps 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

The sad fact is, if something is unethical, but legal, you are free to do it. It might be a basis for a boycott, but boycotting advertising would be absurdly difficult. I think we also have to acknowledge how effective advertising is towards commerce. There is the pessimistic view that it's manipulative, but it is genuinely informative, too, and the economy literally collapse if advertising was ended all together. Some business models, like google, are based entirely on adverstiting. You would have to pay for your search engines and free email accounts. TV and radio wouldn't exist.

[–]cant_even 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

You would have to pay for your search engines and free email accounts.

...if you wanted them. There are millions who remember when they didn't exist, and some of them could live without them again.

[–]HopeThatHalps 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

You mean visit the local library and work your way through the card catalog, or files full of microfilm to gather information? You mean like lick envelopes and stamps and deliver it to the nearest parcel receptacle, and then wait a week for it to get where it was going? You have to be a card carrying ludite to think for a moment that we could be better off living in the past.