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[priestwarrior]

So Independence Day I went to a minor-league baseball game. It was fun (our mascot is a Sasquatch), but I couldn’t help noticing that every time the teams switched out, some hapless fan was dragged out onto the field to compete in a poorly conceived minigame with the sole purpose of promoting some corporate sponsor. Now, I’m sure everyone who’s

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this is sarah from work.

[anonymous]

How approriate that we were just talking about David Foster Wallace's commercial satire the other day - Subsidized Time and The Year of the Depends Adult Undergarment and all of that

Re: this is sarah from work.

[priestwarrior]

You know, I think this is part of a cultural view of people as programmable: we blame all our problems - obesity, smoking, alcoholism, etcetera - on external factors, such as advertising. We are in control of our behavior, and whether or not that clip (it was interesting) was staged, there's a long way from individually targeting two people and putting them under a half-hour time constraint to actually controlling the behavior of lots of people. More later. I'm going to bed.

Re: this is sarah from work.

[priestwarrior]

Another thing: I sincerely doubt corporations are good enough to push all the right buttons in a mass of consumers to make them buy the right thing. The human mind is an immensely complex object, and I don't believe in an Adrian Veidt watching 108 simultaneous TV channels and deducing all the right marketing trends and buzzwords - I don't think sociology is an exact enough science to do anything like that.

What advertising might do to be profitable is slightly nudge the thinking patterns of millions of people rather than brainwashing individuals...

or that could be complete bull. I don't have any deep understanding of economics, and I do have a deep mistrust of some of the basic concepts that underlie modern society, including the ability of the social sciences to make accurate predictions.

Re: this is sarah from work.

[anonymous]

Levi, if you won't trust any study based on economic or sociological concepts - a stance which sort of throws a wrench into any serious discussion of social phenomena - will you at least trust in the motivating power of the dollar

Re: this is sarah from work.

[priestwarrior]

Not going to let me get away with anything, eh? Well, good

Re: this is sarah from work.

[anonymous]

Sure thing. I think we agree here, since I don't really buy into the whole "cradle-to-grave branding" thing either. People aren't automatons, but when a person whose mind is not quite fully developed, whether it be a toddler or one of those jerks I always overhear talking about iPhones and Hummers in the U of A gym, comes under the influence of one of these multi-million dollar ad campaigns formulated by trained experts, they don't really stand much of a chance. Which is scary, because the companies are pushing these people over the border into automaton-land just to make a buck. Not much of a moral decision.