The hole needing filling is the problem. — Isaac
I didn't say they had no part to play. Had transistors not been invented there'd be no televisions and hence no MTV, but we don't blame transistors for the popularity of the flannel shirt. The point was that advertisers neither decided, nor encouraged the trend. They may have helped finance the technology which allowed it, but so did bankers, accountants, HR managers... — Isaac
Do you have a source for further reading? — ZzzoneiroCosm
ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process — Milgram 1974
I think their influence is exaggerated. — Isaac
It's a ruse to call a society governed by mass manipulation a democracy.
Mass (need I say, nigh-invisible) manipulation: from public relations to motivation research to advertising to political strategy to perception management (military) to ubiquitous mis- and disinformation.
There is nothing democratic about a society informed by ubiquitous "conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses" (Bernays, 1928). — ZzzoneiroCosm
If you want to discuss this:
The right-wingers say that the "self-serving and devious" are the leftists.
The leftists say that the "self-serving and devious" are the right-wingers.
They also differ in who exactly those "innocent masses" are.
So who is who exactly?
— baker
...you might start a thread in the politics section. — ZzzoneiroCosm
I assume you accept that the popularity of flannel shirts in the 90s had its origin in the grunge movement given a global platform on MTV. — ZzzoneiroCosm
Advertisers have created a culture of consumerism. — ZzzoneiroCosm
I suggest reading Edward Bernays and Ernest Dichter (et al) to get a picture of how a culture of consumerism was intentionally created. They're proud of their work and talk about it more or less openly. — ZzzoneiroCosm
The hole needing filling is the problem.
— Isaac
Sure, a good part of the problem. But the saturation of society by adsters deepens the hole and offers insidious pseudo-solutions to the hole - what Frankl called the existential vacuum.
So I think mass manipulation sustains the existential vacuum. I don't see a way to tease them apart. — ZzzoneiroCosm
Not even if it rained gold coins
would we have our fill
of sensual pleasures.
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/dhp/dhp.14.than.html
So I think mass manipulation sustains the existential vacuum. I don't see a way to tease them apart.
And you want to be a psychotherapist?? — baker
True. Using psychology to manipulate is a betrayal. It exploits something intimate and innocent. — Tate
Genuinely interested in a reference or substantiation for this claim. — ZzzoneiroCosm
By way of reference, you might start with Asch and Milgram with their work on peer and authority influences on conformity, then perhaps Erika Richardson on group membership roles and conformity.Tarnow did some work on the mechanism of group conformity in the early part of the millennium, and Martin a few years later expanded on the mechanism showing the role of systemic processing.
Mainly, conformity is the result of numerous influences on our thinking from submission to authority, reversion to mean group beliefs, social hierarchy strategies, even simple prediction error reduction. Advertisers use these influences, but they didn't create them, nor would they be eliminated if advertisers stopped.
What matters, for conformity, is the degree to which each person can see the whole of their society as a functioning unit (reduces submission to authority), the degree to which information is shared (reduces group influence on error reduction) and the egalitarian distribution of status in social hierarchies. — Isaac
Hence in order to get away from the ennui of pastimes without exposing themselves to the dangers of intimacy, most people compromise for games when they are available, and these fill the major part of the more interesting hours of social intercourse. That is the social significance of games. — Eric Berne, M. D - Games People Play
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