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> Advertising is almost always an attempt to emotionally manipulate people by lying to them. Advertising does not inherently rest on lying to people. The prob

by Kalium 8y ago

> Advertising is almost always an attempt to emotionally manipulate people by lying to them. Advertising does not inherently rest on lying to people. The problem is, once you strip away this you wind up with a definition of abuse that is essentially "emotionally manipulating people to feel what someone else wants them to". Which is an excellent description of the vast majority of human interaction.

TeMPOraL 8y ago
> The problem is, once you strip away this you wind up with a definition of abuse that is essentially "emotionally manipulating people to feel what someone else wants them to". Which is an excellent description of the vast majority of human interaction. Not if you notice that for vast majority of human interaction, that sentence ends with ", done in good faith and for mutual gain". Most individual interactions like this. Advertising definitely isn't.
- Kalium 8y ago
  In my admittedly sharply limited experience, at least one party to any such conversation genuinely believes they are acting in good faith and for mutual gain. This even includes things like people trying to get me to vote for a candidate I think is unsuitable. Or for a policy I think more likely to worsen the problems the canvasser wants to solve. I think there may be more room for subtlety here. I've known plenty of marketers in my life. Most of them have genuinely believed that what they were marketing was something to improve the lives of the would-be customer and were acting in good faith to make the prospective customer aware of this. This ice cream? It'll taste good! This salad? Nutritious and filling! This video game or book? Hours of entertainment! This cheap beer? It can lubricate the social events you value! Are there exceptions to this? Absolutely! Philip Morris springs immediately to mind. It may be excessively cynical to dismiss all advertisements as deliberately deceptive, not for mutual gain, or in bad faith is all.
ilikehurdles 8y ago
Ads are more effective when they try to make the receiver feel inadequate. The vast majority of human interaction doesn’t have that goal.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

by Kalium 8y ago

TeMPOraL 8y ago

> The problem is, once you strip away this you wind up with a definition of abuse that is essentially "emotionally manipulating people to feel what someone else wants them to". Which is an excellent description of the vast majority of human interaction. Not if you notice that for vast majority of human interaction, that sentence ends with ", done in good faith and for mutual gain". Most individual interactions like this. Advertising definitely isn't.

Kalium 8y ago
In my admittedly sharply limited experience, at least one party to any such conversation genuinely believes they are acting in good faith and for mutual gain. This even includes things like people trying to get me to vote for a candidate I think is unsuitable. Or for a policy I think more likely to worsen the problems the canvasser wants to solve. I think there may be more room for subtlety here. I've known plenty of marketers in my life. Most of them have genuinely believed that what they were marketing was something to improve the lives of the would-be customer and were acting in good faith to make the prospective customer aware of this. This ice cream? It'll taste good! This salad? Nutritious and filling! This video game or book? Hours of entertainment! This cheap beer? It can lubricate the social events you value! Are there exceptions to this? Absolutely! Philip Morris springs immediately to mind. It may be excessively cynical to dismiss all advertisements as deliberately deceptive, not for mutual gain, or in bad faith is all.

ilikehurdles 8y ago

Ads are more effective when they try to make the receiver feel inadequate. The vast majority of human interaction doesn’t have that goal.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]