Disambiguation:
- For the remainder of this post, “good” and “evil” refer to “beneficial/harmful to human individuals in society”.
- “Ads/marketing” refers to “consumer-targeted marketing exploiting human psychology”
I was driving back home listening to vtuber clips when an ad kicked in: An actor narrates an obviously made-up anecdote about pesticide remains where her husband got hospitalized after eating an apple. The narration was not subtle about its emotional manipulation either: charged language was used throughout - at least 4 people independently threw out their fruits in disgust. The voiceover was so dramatic that I suspect it was synthesized by an AI.
The scary part about this story was that, as I mentally made fun of the bad acting, I realized that some parts of the ad did genuinely get to me. There’s something coded deep into the human genome where we naturally trust other people and resonate with their emotions. Everyone knows that these “anecdotes” are not real (as in, a real person genuinely wanting to share these experiences with you). Even then, it’s impossible to constantly stay on guard and overrule your instincts. These practices that we ridiculously dubbed “persuasive techniques” should really be more aptly named “manipulation tactics”. I find it deeply absurd that we normalized the depiction of manufactured falsehood that’s intended to manipulate the part of our psyche that arguably makes us human. If we say that the economic exploitation of ads is a crime against society. Then the psychological exploitation it designs should be a crime against humanity.
Does this constant abuse of genuine human emotions erode social trust and make us feel more isolated? I won’t claim that because I’m not a Frankfurt School critical theory pseudoscientist. However, on no factual basis, I would like to believe it is the case.
It’s always funny to see all the colorful excuses grifters make up to justify their parasitism upon civil society. There are many arguably evil industries that people can try to justify: one can argue that being an arms-dealer furthers national security, that creating a surveillance state furthers safety of the citizenry, etc. However, some industries stand out even among these that they are entirely unjustifiable for anyone with at least the cognitive ability of a diseased swine. That “The discipline of consumer-targeted marketing, as it currently stands, is not a pure negative towards society and the human race” is almost as ridiculous a statement as “Quantitative trading creates value by furthering market efficiency and propagating information”. Some dude once wrote an essay calling jobs that “create no value” (debatable claim) bullshit jobs. In spirit of that, I think we should call industries that create no value and actively harm everyone else cockroach industries. Not only do they engage in civil sabotage, but they also take away educated labor from more productive industries.
I don’t believe that earning money by being complicit in evil (e.g. working in a cockroach industry) makes you an evil person. In fact, conditionally this might allow you to do more good than alternatives*. However, I do think it’s much more respectable to admit your evils than to conduct laughable sophistry. Some arguments that advertisement is not pure-parasitism include:
- Marketing spreads information and educates consumers
- Hilariously false. The vast majority of consumer-targeted ads by corporations spend the vast majority of their efforts and runtime delivering carefully A/B tested brain control. If you think “carbonated drink company showing you a group of happy people at a beach cracking open bottles with post-processed liquid splash enhanced with carefully engineered sfx” is an attempt to convey information I suggest you go exchange brains with a diseased swine.
- Marketing facilitates innovation by giving new entrants a chance to be known
- Ridiculous nonsense. Every company engages in advertising regardless of innovation. If anything larger companies with more budget and dedicated behavioral psychologists (can anyone even think about a more evil discipline?) have a greater edge. The only innovation facilitated is new ways to manipulate people.
- It contributes to GDP/employment
- It funds free platforms and media
- It can still do that if we force ads to be more informative and less manipulative, but sure
- It’s fun
- Maybe your intellect is fine but your artistic tastes sure are garbage
- I enjoy seeing the human ingenuity displayed in our mastery over mental manipulation
- ……good for you man
Yeah screw you don’t interrupt my vtuber watching again.
*In many cases, a position of complicit evil will be filled by someone else even if you don’t do it. If by occupying that position you use your earnings towards a better cause than the alternative person would’ve, I think it’s arguable that this is a relative social good. Also, to some reasonable degree I don’t think it’s fair to blame people who take their own interest over society’s - we aren’t saints.