7 ms·

Silicon Valley Could Learn a Lot From Skater Culture, Just Not Meritocracy

165 points by wallflower 12y ago

chapel 12y ago
Having read the post, I feel the title here doesn't do it justice. It is also missing half of the title. Title on HN at time of comment: "Silicon Valley Could Learn a Lot from Skater Culture" As far as the article, I wasn't aware of the schism in the 80s around skateboarding culture. I was too young, but even looking back through documentaries and other media about the history, it seems to have been revised to ignore it. I think the article is overall positive, in that there are things to learn so long as we don't ignore the context and the bad side of what has happened in the past.
- sctb 12y ago
  We expanded the submitted title a bit. We're open to suggestions for a better one.
patronagezero 12y ago
Now this is my kind of click-bait title. Using a historically hip counter-culture sport/lifestyle to bait the kind of males that would only drool over being cool into starting an article about sexism. Next up, fem'splaining how the world of basketball is sexist because women's basketball ends up being boring. We're all EQUAL dammit! The lapdogs will continue eating this stuff up while you further polarize the rest of us.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
  Skateboarding is not a crime, but if making bad posts was, this would count.
  - patronagezero 12y ago
    Go watch the oscars or something...
smoyer 12y ago
Gasp! I knew girls with hair like that ... and I hung out with girls that skated (and did BMX and gymnastics). Judged by the timing, I must be about the same age as Ms. Siera and it's kind of an amazing parallel universe in some ways (I had an injury I never recovered from enough to return to the so-called "extreme sports"). In any case, I'm old (yeah ... I said it) now and definitely agree that we need more diversity in our tech work-places. We have an additional problem as our applicant pool is extremely homogeneous. How do we fix that?
- jacalata 12y ago
  here's some tips on expanding your applicant pool: https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/25-tips-for-diverse-hiring https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/25-tips-for-diverse-hiri...
  - sqrt17 12y ago
    I'm not always a fan of modelviewculture, but I think what they say implcitly is very important: start with culture. Have a culture where men and women alike consider themselves functional and important parts of your business. Let this culture speak through your actions (specifically: offer benefits that are attractive to the kind of person you want to attract), and let both the culture and you actions shine through in your public appearance (general website, HR-specific website, job ads). Also: pre-recruiting activities (community involvement, generally getting in touch with people) can help your visibility especially with people who are not well-connected members of the majority group. Get involved, and, as mentioned, let your culture shine through. As they further mention, some of the recruiting practices that are popular tend to be systematically biased towards a single, relatively homogeneous group of people. See this as an opportunity to perform arbitrage on that market by talking to suitable candidates that some of the other players are ignoring.
- pron 12y ago
  A good start would be to not actively push women away with a hostile work environment: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-women-tech-20150222-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-women-tech-20150222-st...
stolio 12y ago
It's really not sexism that freestyle went out of fashion. All the guys that did freestyle were left behind, too. They were also laughed at and ridiculed. The only reason Rodney Mullen kept his career going is he learned to skate street and he did it really well. If one of the female freestylers had done the same I'm sure the sport would look different. It really frustrates me that the author complains skateboarding isn't/wasn't a meritocracy. Number one, when it was one and the sport became more dangerous and athletic, the girls couldn't keep up. Number two, it isn't a meritocracy anymore because there are 'girls only' competitions where girls are sheltered from having to compete with the boys but they still get prize money and gold medals. If you compare a girl and a guy skater at the same skill level the girl will have more money and opportunities coming in. I don't think she really wants skateboarding to be a meritocracy, she doesn't want the pro female skateboarders to lose their sponsorships because there are hundreds of guys who are better than them who are looking for sponsorships. Unless she wants to redefine the merit of a skateboarder as the ability to convince people to buy things. That's problematic as well. If we're being honest, doing stupid and dangerous things is largely the domain of young dudes and that's why they're a better target audience to sell skateboards to. But this is our current culture, calling things sexism sells. (edit: it's really disappointing to see this catching downvotes.)
- sp332 12y ago
  This seems unlikely (given only what's in the article). She doesn't say that the decline of freestyle was sexist. The point is that the target demographic of commercial skateboard culture shrank drastically. Males—check; males under 18—check. And as it hit each check point it was reducing the population it was going to appeal to. And your comment doesn't address the specific claims of sexist behavior, like those Enjoi ads or Hubba's "The Girls".
  - stolio 12y ago
    Just because "the target demographic of commercial skateboard culture shrank drastically" doesn't mean it was a conscious or subconscious decision of anybody involved in the industry. I'm sure there were plenty of skateboarding companies that tried to stick with the old style and simply went out of business. Things change, you can't always blame somebody when they do. On Enjoi: you have to take things in context and even a casual glance at their ads makes it clear they trend towards the offensive and absurd for the sake of being offensive and absurd. They also joke about pooping their pants but I don't think they're trying to advocate for it. On Hubba: a wheel company I've never heard of that doesn't have a wheel on Amazon's 100 best selling skateboarding wheels list and only has one set of bearings on Amazon's 100 best selling bearings. I'm not sure how they're the representatives of skateboarding culture. I just don't like the article, I think the people and companies were chosen specifically to support the narrative of sexism. Elissa Steamer and Leticia Bufoni matter more to skateboarding than Hubba Wheels ever will, but their names aren't even mentioned, only the fact that they're told they "skate like guys" but you don't have their names so it's hard to go find the context of what that means in skateboarding. If you watch five minutes of girls and five minutes of guys skateboarding at the XGames you'll realize the girls skate differently, they have a different posture and a totally different style but not really in a good way. They often look uncertain. But as is so common these days the compliments of "skating like a guy" are divorced from context in order to make them look sexist.
neves 12y ago
Hey, I was craving for Kathy Sierra writing since Creating Passionate Users: http://headrush.typepad.com/ http://headrush.typepad.com/
- mahmud 12y ago
  Sierra is a genius. I have been developing for 12+ years when I read her design patterns book for "newbies", and I learned something from every page.
  - wallflower 12y ago
    In case you were not aware, Kathy Sierra has a new book! http://www.amazon.com/Badass-Making-Awesome-Kathy-Sierra/dp/1491919019/ http://www.amazon.com/Badass-Making-Awesome-Kathy-Sierra/dp/...
    - tomjen3 12y ago
      Not available on the Kindle? How is that making your users awesome?
- tomjen3 12y ago
  She eventually returned to blogging over at http://seriouspony.com/blog/ http://seriouspony.com/blog/, unfortunately she also stopped again - and serious pony has since been run of Twitter by trolls. I shall cry very dry tears once Weev dies.
shanemhansen 12y ago
The best part of the article was "skateistan". I'd love to learn more about how skating became so popular with women in Afghanistan.
- leejo 12y ago
  Then pick up a copy of the Skateistan book: http://skateistan.org/book http://skateistan.org/book # 100% of the profits go back to Skateistan.
mc32 12y ago
To be fair, the article cited is in the opinion section, so don't deconstruct it too much. I think she makes some good points, but awkwardly uses skating culture and its change to drive her points across. Mainly, marketing, and marketing targeting has had a huge negative effect on society. There has been good, and there has been bad, but more bad than good. With targeted marketing, you get this kind of thing where advertisers go for the jugular on their core market, abusively ignoring the side-effects. So you have them marketing violence and counterculture to boys and pink-love-mother-earth to girls. On the other hand, they get to market narrow markets like fish sauce to SE Asians, and Vegemite to Commonwealthers, for example. So, while it's nice that this makes an Aussie feel at home, or a Thai feel like they are part of the social fabric, on the whole, targeted marketing can have a stratifying effect, it amplifies the differences and you can end up with unrecognizable monsters like the ones where sexism is used to sell products, or shape the youth (to drink sugary drinks). The alternative would be bland marketing which necessarily would have to appeal to the mainstream, which also has its drawbacks. but on the whole? But back to sexism in the workplace. It would be nice, in thought, for there to be a more or less even distribution, of people in the different industries, and we can try, but, in the end, I don't think it's going to happen any time soon. There are too many social aspects which go into this, from social behavior, to individual behavior. Maybe a start would be for people not to feel that some jobs have more cachet than others. That there be no such thing as cliqueishness and clubbism, tribalism. That people didn't recruit from their pool of friends --and this happens anywhere from Facebook, to Carwashes, to Airport personnel, to professorships, to ethnic restaurants. And while we're at it, why not try and make things equal at the lower and top ends of the scale, not just the middle.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
jt2190 12y ago
Not to get too far off topic, but the linked opinion piece got me wondering if any games attempt to model a shift from an open/inclusive culture to a closed/exclusive one, and I found this: > Mao... is a card game... in which the aim is to get rid > of all of the cards in hand without breaking certain > unspoken rules. The game forbids its players from > explaining the rules, and new players are often told > only "the only rule you may be told is this one"... > Specifics are discovered through trial and error. A > player who breaks a rule is penalized by being given > an additional card from the deck. The person giving > the penalty must state what the incorrect action was, > without explaining the rule that was broken. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_(card_game) http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_(card_game) (edit: Yeah, this is way too off topic. ;-) More generally, I was thinking about how the system of marketing skateboarding somehow optimized around young males. From a financial perspective it might make sense for a young, hungry company go after what appeared to be their most profitable market. On the other hand, by focusing so hard on serving one group, they may have failed to nurture a larger, more diverse marketplace.)
- lmm 12y ago
  The experience of playing Mao is just the opposite: you start off as a foreigner, with no understanding of what's going on, and you accumulate large numbers of cards. Gradually you start to understand, become part of the group. In the end you're able to turn the system to your own ends (or, equivalently, you are captured by the system), becoming one of the ruling class yourself. (I understand it's partly an allegory for the authoritarian Chinese regime: the rules are pointless, everyone knows they're pointless, but as you engage with the system you start to have an interest in the rules being followed, and in the end you use the rules to enhance your own status at the expense of naïve newcomers).
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
famousactress 12y ago
Of course, but this is probably true on some level about nearly every sport or physical activity. Sports probably provide interesting models for individual and tribal innovation, and something resembling a fairly clean meritocracy... before a culture gets layered on top of that which puts up nasty guard rails and biases. I don't think we have to worry about SV emulating that, it already resembles that model quite thoroughly. Fortunately I do think the conversation about how to resolve what distracts from merit in our industry is at least in the beginnings of happening. I don't think it's reasonable to say that nothing to learn from or even emulate about an (admittedly deeply) flawed culture.
- goodmornings 12y ago
  Note that sports didn't really aspire to be a meritocracy before professionalism. The most meritocratic sports combine inclusiveness with professionalism i.e. a lot of people can enter the sport and the best are recognized as such. Programming often favors amateurism[0] like open source, side projects and being "the right kind of nerdy", while at the same being elitist in regard to things like education. I also think a lot of the problems in regard to equality are latent effects of many who got started in the early days of the personal computer did so because of their dad [1] (and that gender roles where much stricter at the time). [0] Which isn't necessarily about skill, while it do tend to change the meaning of skill. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7677309 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7677309
pakled_engineer 12y ago
True skate culture is about sharing, when one of you gets sponsored and can afford to build pipes and new equip you invite everybody down and sometimes give skate partners struggling money so they can afford to skate F/T and get into comps with you. Never been about meritocracy that I remember only when guys like Shaun White showed up and built private only pipes, ditched friends to hang out in VIP lounges ect. Skating empty pools listening to TSOL none of us were anything but friends who supported each other and were friends first and business after, I guess this would be the last thing you would want in business/startup culture. There were always women around skating and snowboarding with us too I don't get any of this article it certainly wasn't like this, W Coast circa early90s til now. One of our best friends was a sponsored female snowboarder who would pay for all of us to come heliskiing and boarding with her all season long, even the friends who couldn't ride for shit came too because true skateboarding culture.I don't see this working at all in the business unless you run a lab similar to MIT back in the Stallman days and are willing to put the community and friends above profits which seems like a good way to kill any business.
taurath 12y ago
Wasn't that the exact same thing that happened with games marketing? Its amazing to me how many cultural effects are coming out now from the types of ads that people watched growing up - ads that shaped people's behaviors (skating is for GUYS ONLY, gaming is for ONLY COOL DUDES). As advertising has gotten more and more adept at getting into people's heads and being much more subtly (or not, if you know what to look for) psychological, I wonder what cultural effects we'll be feeling in the next 5, 10 years. Anyone know of any egregious examples of advertisers trying to establish a cultural norm around their industry?

165 points by wallflower 12y ago

Having read the post, I feel the title here doesn't do it justice. It is also missing half of the title. Title on HN at time of comment: "Silicon Valley Could Learn a Lot from Skater Culture" As far as the article, I wasn't aware of the schism in the 80s around skateboarding culture. I was too young, but even looking back through documentaries and other media about the history, it seems to have been revised to ignore it. I think the article is overall positive, in that there are things to learn so long as we don't ignore the context and the bad side of what has happened in the past.

sctb 12y ago
We expanded the submitted title a bit. We're open to suggestions for a better one.

patronagezero 12y ago

Now this is my kind of click-bait title. Using a historically hip counter-culture sport/lifestyle to bait the kind of males that would only drool over being cool into starting an article about sexism. Next up, fem'splaining how the world of basketball is sexist because women's basketball ends up being boring. We're all EQUAL dammit! The lapdogs will continue eating this stuff up while you further polarize the rest of us.

GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
Skateboarding is not a crime, but if making bad posts was, this would count.
- patronagezero 12y ago
  Go watch the oscars or something...

smoyer 12y ago

Gasp! I knew girls with hair like that ... and I hung out with girls that skated (and did BMX and gymnastics). Judged by the timing, I must be about the same age as Ms. Siera and it's kind of an amazing parallel universe in some ways (I had an injury I never recovered from enough to return to the so-called "extreme sports"). In any case, I'm old (yeah ... I said it) now and definitely agree that we need more diversity in our tech work-places. We have an additional problem as our applicant pool is extremely homogeneous. How do we fix that?

jacalata 12y ago
here's some tips on expanding your applicant pool: https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/25-tips-for-diverse-hiring https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/25-tips-for-diverse-hiri...
- sqrt17 12y ago
  I'm not always a fan of modelviewculture, but I think what they say implcitly is very important: start with culture. Have a culture where men and women alike consider themselves functional and important parts of your business. Let this culture speak through your actions (specifically: offer benefits that are attractive to the kind of person you want to attract), and let both the culture and you actions shine through in your public appearance (general website, HR-specific website, job ads). Also: pre-recruiting activities (community involvement, generally getting in touch with people) can help your visibility especially with people who are not well-connected members of the majority group. Get involved, and, as mentioned, let your culture shine through. As they further mention, some of the recruiting practices that are popular tend to be systematically biased towards a single, relatively homogeneous group of people. See this as an opportunity to perform arbitrage on that market by talking to suitable candidates that some of the other players are ignoring.
pron 12y ago
A good start would be to not actively push women away with a hostile work environment: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-women-tech-20150222-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-women-tech-20150222-st...

stolio 12y ago

It's really not sexism that freestyle went out of fashion. All the guys that did freestyle were left behind, too. They were also laughed at and ridiculed. The only reason Rodney Mullen kept his career going is he learned to skate street and he did it really well. If one of the female freestylers had done the same I'm sure the sport would look different. It really frustrates me that the author complains skateboarding isn't/wasn't a meritocracy. Number one, when it was one and the sport became more dangerous and athletic, the girls couldn't keep up. Number two, it isn't a meritocracy anymore because there are 'girls only' competitions where girls are sheltered from having to compete with the boys but they still get prize money and gold medals. If you compare a girl and a guy skater at the same skill level the girl will have more money and opportunities coming in. I don't think she really wants skateboarding to be a meritocracy, she doesn't want the pro female skateboarders to lose their sponsorships because there are hundreds of guys who are better than them who are looking for sponsorships. Unless she wants to redefine the merit of a skateboarder as the ability to convince people to buy things. That's problematic as well. If we're being honest, doing stupid and dangerous things is largely the domain of young dudes and that's why they're a better target audience to sell skateboards to. But this is our current culture, calling things sexism sells. (edit: it's really disappointing to see this catching downvotes.)

sp332 12y ago
This seems unlikely (given only what's in the article). She doesn't say that the decline of freestyle was sexist. The point is that the target demographic of commercial skateboard culture shrank drastically. Males—check; males under 18—check. And as it hit each check point it was reducing the population it was going to appeal to. And your comment doesn't address the specific claims of sexist behavior, like those Enjoi ads or Hubba's "The Girls".
- stolio 12y ago
  Just because "the target demographic of commercial skateboard culture shrank drastically" doesn't mean it was a conscious or subconscious decision of anybody involved in the industry. I'm sure there were plenty of skateboarding companies that tried to stick with the old style and simply went out of business. Things change, you can't always blame somebody when they do. On Enjoi: you have to take things in context and even a casual glance at their ads makes it clear they trend towards the offensive and absurd for the sake of being offensive and absurd. They also joke about pooping their pants but I don't think they're trying to advocate for it. On Hubba: a wheel company I've never heard of that doesn't have a wheel on Amazon's 100 best selling skateboarding wheels list and only has one set of bearings on Amazon's 100 best selling bearings. I'm not sure how they're the representatives of skateboarding culture. I just don't like the article, I think the people and companies were chosen specifically to support the narrative of sexism. Elissa Steamer and Leticia Bufoni matter more to skateboarding than Hubba Wheels ever will, but their names aren't even mentioned, only the fact that they're told they "skate like guys" but you don't have their names so it's hard to go find the context of what that means in skateboarding. If you watch five minutes of girls and five minutes of guys skateboarding at the XGames you'll realize the girls skate differently, they have a different posture and a totally different style but not really in a good way. They often look uncertain. But as is so common these days the compliments of "skating like a guy" are divorced from context in order to make them look sexist.

neves 12y ago

Hey, I was craving for Kathy Sierra writing since Creating Passionate Users: http://headrush.typepad.com/ http://headrush.typepad.com/

mahmud 12y ago
Sierra is a genius. I have been developing for 12+ years when I read her design patterns book for "newbies", and I learned something from every page.
- wallflower 12y ago
  In case you were not aware, Kathy Sierra has a new book! http://www.amazon.com/Badass-Making-Awesome-Kathy-Sierra/dp/1491919019/ http://www.amazon.com/Badass-Making-Awesome-Kathy-Sierra/dp/...
  - tomjen3 12y ago
    Not available on the Kindle? How is that making your users awesome?
tomjen3 12y ago
She eventually returned to blogging over at http://seriouspony.com/blog/ http://seriouspony.com/blog/, unfortunately she also stopped again - and serious pony has since been run of Twitter by trolls. I shall cry very dry tears once Weev dies.

shanemhansen 12y ago

The best part of the article was "skateistan". I'd love to learn more about how skating became so popular with women in Afghanistan.

leejo 12y ago
Then pick up a copy of the Skateistan book: http://skateistan.org/book http://skateistan.org/book # 100% of the profits go back to Skateistan.

mc32 12y ago

To be fair, the article cited is in the opinion section, so don't deconstruct it too much. I think she makes some good points, but awkwardly uses skating culture and its change to drive her points across. Mainly, marketing, and marketing targeting has had a huge negative effect on society. There has been good, and there has been bad, but more bad than good. With targeted marketing, you get this kind of thing where advertisers go for the jugular on their core market, abusively ignoring the side-effects. So you have them marketing violence and counterculture to boys and pink-love-mother-earth to girls. On the other hand, they get to market narrow markets like fish sauce to SE Asians, and Vegemite to Commonwealthers, for example. So, while it's nice that this makes an Aussie feel at home, or a Thai feel like they are part of the social fabric, on the whole, targeted marketing can have a stratifying effect, it amplifies the differences and you can end up with unrecognizable monsters like the ones where sexism is used to sell products, or shape the youth (to drink sugary drinks). The alternative would be bland marketing which necessarily would have to appeal to the mainstream, which also has its drawbacks. but on the whole? But back to sexism in the workplace. It would be nice, in thought, for there to be a more or less even distribution, of people in the different industries, and we can try, but, in the end, I don't think it's going to happen any time soon. There are too many social aspects which go into this, from social behavior, to individual behavior. Maybe a start would be for people not to feel that some jobs have more cachet than others. That there be no such thing as cliqueishness and clubbism, tribalism. That people didn't recruit from their pool of friends --and this happens anywhere from Facebook, to Carwashes, to Airport personnel, to professorships, to ethnic restaurants. And while we're at it, why not try and make things equal at the lower and top ends of the scale, not just the middle.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

jt2190 12y ago

Not to get too far off topic, but the linked opinion piece got me wondering if any games attempt to model a shift from an open/inclusive culture to a closed/exclusive one, and I found this: > Mao... is a card game... in which the aim is to get rid > of all of the cards in hand without breaking certain > unspoken rules. The game forbids its players from > explaining the rules, and new players are often told > only "the only rule you may be told is this one"... > Specifics are discovered through trial and error. A > player who breaks a rule is penalized by being given > an additional card from the deck. The person giving > the penalty must state what the incorrect action was, > without explaining the rule that was broken. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_(card_game) http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_(card_game) (edit: Yeah, this is way too off topic. ;-) More generally, I was thinking about how the system of marketing skateboarding somehow optimized around young males. From a financial perspective it might make sense for a young, hungry company go after what appeared to be their most profitable market. On the other hand, by focusing so hard on serving one group, they may have failed to nurture a larger, more diverse marketplace.)

lmm 12y ago
The experience of playing Mao is just the opposite: you start off as a foreigner, with no understanding of what's going on, and you accumulate large numbers of cards. Gradually you start to understand, become part of the group. In the end you're able to turn the system to your own ends (or, equivalently, you are captured by the system), becoming one of the ruling class yourself. (I understand it's partly an allegory for the authoritarian Chinese regime: the rules are pointless, everyone knows they're pointless, but as you engage with the system you start to have an interest in the rules being followed, and in the end you use the rules to enhance your own status at the expense of naïve newcomers).

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

famousactress 12y ago

Of course, but this is probably true on some level about nearly every sport or physical activity. Sports probably provide interesting models for individual and tribal innovation, and something resembling a fairly clean meritocracy... before a culture gets layered on top of that which puts up nasty guard rails and biases. I don't think we have to worry about SV emulating that, it already resembles that model quite thoroughly. Fortunately I do think the conversation about how to resolve what distracts from merit in our industry is at least in the beginnings of happening. I don't think it's reasonable to say that nothing to learn from or even emulate about an (admittedly deeply) flawed culture.

goodmornings 12y ago
Note that sports didn't really aspire to be a meritocracy before professionalism. The most meritocratic sports combine inclusiveness with professionalism i.e. a lot of people can enter the sport and the best are recognized as such. Programming often favors amateurism[0] like open source, side projects and being "the right kind of nerdy", while at the same being elitist in regard to things like education. I also think a lot of the problems in regard to equality are latent effects of many who got started in the early days of the personal computer did so because of their dad [1] (and that gender roles where much stricter at the time). [0] Which isn't necessarily about skill, while it do tend to change the meaning of skill. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7677309 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7677309

pakled_engineer 12y ago

True skate culture is about sharing, when one of you gets sponsored and can afford to build pipes and new equip you invite everybody down and sometimes give skate partners struggling money so they can afford to skate F/T and get into comps with you. Never been about meritocracy that I remember only when guys like Shaun White showed up and built private only pipes, ditched friends to hang out in VIP lounges ect. Skating empty pools listening to TSOL none of us were anything but friends who supported each other and were friends first and business after, I guess this would be the last thing you would want in business/startup culture. There were always women around skating and snowboarding with us too I don't get any of this article it certainly wasn't like this, W Coast circa early90s til now. One of our best friends was a sponsored female snowboarder who would pay for all of us to come heliskiing and boarding with her all season long, even the friends who couldn't ride for shit came too because true skateboarding culture.I don't see this working at all in the business unless you run a lab similar to MIT back in the Stallman days and are willing to put the community and friends above profits which seems like a good way to kill any business.

taurath 12y ago

Wasn't that the exact same thing that happened with games marketing? Its amazing to me how many cultural effects are coming out now from the types of ads that people watched growing up - ads that shaped people's behaviors (skating is for GUYS ONLY, gaming is for ONLY COOL DUDES). As advertising has gotten more and more adept at getting into people's heads and being much more subtly (or not, if you know what to look for) psychological, I wonder what cultural effects we'll be feeling in the next 5, 10 years. Anyone know of any egregious examples of advertisers trying to establish a cultural norm around their industry?