From: Michael Wiik (mwiik@messagenet.com)
Date: Tue Jul 02 2002 - 08:11:43 MDT
spike66 <spike66@attbi.com> wrote:
> Most advertisting is disinformation, carefully calculated
> to get the proletariat to buy one brand over another, or believe one
> religion over another, or vote a certain way.
Actually, that's being very generous to advertising. In Douglas
Rushkoff's _Coercion_, it's claimed that Dale Cernegie's _How to Win
Friends and Influence People_ "has provided the basis for decades of ...
research into personality assessment and behavoir control". Techniques
used in advertising and salesmanship are also used in interrogation.
Interrogaters will pronounce words strangely, and alter the clocks in
the room you're in, all to make you feel you're losing it. You want to
alienate, disorientate, infantilize your prisoner or customer.
I prefer Bill Hick's approach, telling all salesman to go kill
themselves. Why not? Thousands of years of slow human cultural progress
in reciprocality and mutual understanding have been laid waste by a
century of advertising. Shucks, we could've used that to see us thru the
next century while awaiting the singularity. Damn.
I saw Brittany's Pepsi commercial on TV, and taking another cue from the
immortal Hicks, wondered if she was still claiming to be a virgin, since
she was obviously *sucking Satan's cock*.
I hear Iggy's 'Lust for Life' on a TV ad and wait for the lines 'about
the liquor and drugs...and the sex machine...' and don't hear them. I
hear CCR's 'Fortunate Son' (again, carefully editted) used as
flag-waving backdrop for another commercial. And of course we all know
about the Stone's song 'Start Me Up' used for Windows 95 ads without the
'you make a grown man cry' chorus.
(Maybe Damien can write a book -- _The Last Opaque Generation_. I wonder
what will happen to spammers once full transparency comes into play.
Would you deal with someone who had no problems pissing off and
externalizing his costs unto millions of folks to find one or two
shmucks willing to pay him something?. Maybe the streets will be full of
unemployable/untrustable people, who's only crime will be they once sent
a spam email.)
I keep thinking that abstinence programs in school are all about
corporate profits. They don't want the kids to have sex since if they're
not doing it they will become susceptible to advertising that says if
you buy this, you'll get sex. If you're a teen getting laid regularly, a
trip to the mall doesn't seem as interesting as it might otherwise.
So I'm starting a meme to get everyone to wear blue jeans and a black
t-shirt all the time. You can wear a suit if you have to for work, but
otherwise just wear durable, plain jeans and a black t-shirt w/o any
corporate or designer logos. You know, the government might be a little
apprehensive if a million man march came to washington, think how
utterly terrified they'd be if all of them wore the exact same clothing.
-Mike
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