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priestwarrior

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Jul 05, 2008 23:24

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 ( Read more... )

Comments 14

belmoon July 7 2008, 00:41:20 UTC

It may not sound as intelligent to reference a widely-watched television show, but whatever. There's an episode of Futurama where the lead, Fry, experiences an underwear advertisement in his sleep. He naturally freaks the hell out, and everyone else tells him it's completely normal in the year 3000 to find advertising everywhere, including in one's own head.

I really don't think the writer was far off in that idea.

belmoon July 7 2008, 00:43:47 UTC

Oh, BY THE WAY. If your entries start to get progressively longer, look up how to make LJ-cuts. It's common courtesy to save people who have you on their friendlist the trouble of having your entry take up most of it (this sentence is confusing, but you know what I mean and I am too lazy to fix it).

priestwarrior July 7 2008, 13:42:18 UTC

Hm, that's funny - but every dystopian/sci-fi writer ever does this: they assume that current trends will continue unhindered for the next thousands of years. Which, considering the extreme mutability of our culture, is probably not a good assumption. Still, it's no use writing cautionary tales about trends that don't exist yet. See the brilliant first chapter of "The Napoleon of Notting Hill" by G.K. Chesterton for more on that.

omg caffenee101 July 9 2008, 03:25:43 UTC

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.....

it's a LEvi blog!

Re: omg caffenee101 July 9 2008, 03:27:57 UTC

-Like the Jetsons. Who ever thought that we would have video conferencing was crazy.

this is sarah from work. anonymous July 11 2008, 22:14:33 UTC

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 July 12 2008, 04:57:25 UTC

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 July 21 2008, 01:30:53 UTC

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 July 21 2008, 23:40:46 UTC

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 ( ... )

Thread 6

David's response: anonymous August 6 2008, 15:18:08 UTC

I'm biased towards advertising. I'll admit it. It's powerful industry. It has an extensive background, and it will doubtless continue without any foreseeable hindrances of notability for many generations to come. Moreover, it's necessary, and by necessary I mean that it will always be a need for every business to get it's products or services into the "horizons" of their potential buyers. After all, businesses need money - go figure ( ... )

Re: David's response: priestwarrior August 9 2008, 23:50:05 UTC

Okay, your response is kind of confusing, but I'll take it paragraph by paragraph ( ... )

priestwarrior August 13 2008, 16:35:27 UTC

This one's just for fun: was watching a television show t'other day. Called Psych. No comment on overall quality of show, but I was enjoying what I saw. Anyway, there was this gem of dialogue:

Protagonist's Uncle: Hey, remember that place where I used to take you and buy you burgers and shakes?
Protagonist: Yeah, Red Robin.
Protagonist's Uncle: Meet you there in an hour.
[commercial break - ad for Red Robin comes on]
Protagonist: Oh man, these shakes are SOOO GOOOOOD! It's like, one part strawberry, two parts awesome!

Me: Subtle, guys, real subtle.

I've heard of that happening in other shows too. I wonder how much of television show scripts is written by advertisers.