11 ms·

Your Head as a Battleground, Dueling Memes

82 points by bjxrn 11y ago

kittenfluff 11y ago
I agree completely. I think you have a moral obligation to yourself to avoid advertising as much as is reasonably possible. This means not watching television (unless you're paying to watch it free of advertisements), not reading publications that are heavily supported by advertising (e.g. most magazines) and using an ad blocker everywhere on the web. You will never be able to completely avoid advertising without taking yourself out of mainstream society, but you can avoid the most insidious parts, and you can try very hard to condition yourself against the rest of it. The "second-order" advertising (e.g. critic recommendations, word of mouth) is much harder to deal with, especially if you believe that some people have good, unbiased, not-unduly-influenced opinions that you will benefit from listening to. My only recommendation is to curate the people whose opinions you listen to very carefully, and think hard about who they might be (possibly unwittingly) influenced by. I am sympathetic to the argument that advertising pays for many of the things I like, particularly on the web. But I don't think that argument is compelling enough for it to be worth handing over control of my head. Of course, advertising is only one factor, though it is probably the most important factor. Other systems competing for a share of your mind include religions, political parties and/or systems of political thought, philosophical systems, programming languages and/or communities (eg functional vs. object oriented), sports teams, national identities, racial identities, and more. You may want to allow some of these access to a share of your mind (e.g. many people enjoy supporting a sports team, even when the rational part of their brain knows that their sports team isn't inherently better than any other). But for the most part, I think it's better to avoid falling into these traps. The best exposition I can recall is one of Paul Graham's earlier essays, "Keep Your Identity Small"[0]. I would probably argue a similar point, but phrase it differently - keep your identity broad. Instead of thinking of yourself as a "Ruby programmer" or a "functional programmer" it is better to think of yourself as a "programmer" (and even better not to think of yourself as a programmer at all!). Instead of thinking of yourself as American, or Chinese, or as black, or white, try to think of yourself as a human. The broader you can make your identity, the less chance you have of accidentally falling prey to any of the theories competing for a space in your head. [0] http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
- ectoplasm 11y ago
  Why do you think YC finances HN? Also, it's quite possible to watch TV shows for free without advertisements. And, how do you get around product placement?
  - kittenfluff 11y ago
    Like I said, "you will never be able to completely avoid advertising without taking yourself out of mainstream society" and "second-order advertising is much harder to deal with". I don't claim to be immune to advertising, or know how to avoid all of it! But knowing you are susceptible to advertising is the first step towards not letting it influence you (too much).
- harperlee 11y ago
  > The "second-order" advertising (e.g. critic recommendations, word of mouth) is much harder to deal with, especially if you believe that some people have good, unbiased, not-unduly-influenced opinions that you will benefit from listening to. My only recommendation is to curate the people whose opinions you listen to very carefully, and think hard about who they might be (possibly unwittingly) influenced by. But we rely on other people's opinion precisely to avoid thinking hard about everything, which would be overkill at best, and could even kill you at worst. What you say is idyllic, but in practice we just go with the flow. It's easy and safe, from an evolutionary point of view. Choosing requires energy, time and attention [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overchoice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overchoice], and it has a big opportunity cost [http://www.brainpickings.org/2013/11/27/the-psychology-of-self-control/ http://www.brainpickings.org/2013/11/27/the-psychology-of-se...]. Do I need to thoroughly bet every "expert" that I listen to? In practice, this is infeasible. You definitely should do it for important stuff, but advertising covers many other unimportant things (such as yoghurt brands) for which it's economically optimal to just assume everyone is an expert. Also, you approach advertising and human bias such as social proof as only bad things, and I think one needs to also consider the good side of it. Even for things not so trivial as yoghurt, perhaps if I spend 40 hours choosing for the best car I can make an optimal decision; or perhaps choosing the one that is advertised the most is sufficient; I get a suboptimal choice but psychologically it's less demanding; socially is more acceptable (as I have the same car as the rest); heuristically it might even hold some intelligence (advertising power carries some information about financial strength, financial strength about solid business, and solid business about good products). Typically, you will shortlist a couple of cars and try them. It's a matter of being a satisficer and not a maximizer [http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-you-make-decisions-says-a-lot-about-how-happy-you-are-1412614997 http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-you-make-decisions-says-a-lo...].
rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
Perhaps this is my inner Ultra-American speaking, but I think it's perfectly fine for people to feel aligned, even owned, by their brands. Hell, look around you. How many items do you see that were NOT made by a corporation? The brands I choose are a reflection of my personality. I shop at Wegmans instead of having groceries delivered because I like their quality and I can always run into people I know. I buy Apple products because they appear more integrated and polished than other consumer tech, and that is an important aspect of my personality. I'm not a shill (ok, I did work for Apple a few years ago), but rather I am so content with the brands I choose that I enjoy telling others about them.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  > Perhaps this is my inner Ultra-American speaking, but I think it's perfectly fine for people to feel aligned, even owned, by their brands. I strongly disagree with that. Brands should not 'own people', brands should be at best an indicator of what you can expect from a product quality or service wise. And what's being American (Ultra-American??) got to do with it? > Hell, look around you. How many items do you see that were NOT made by a corporation? That does not have anything to do with it. Having corporations produce goods is fine, having them try to hack our brains is not. > The brands I choose are a reflection of my personality. Please read 'The Space Merchants', one of my favorite books which is a frontal assault on that one sentence.
  - tinco 11y ago
    An Ultra-American is so capitalist that they prefer plutocracy over democracy. It's some sort of consequence of the cold war I'd guess. I've not read 'The Space Merchants' but I wonder how it assaults that sentence as I believe it is generally true. That's not to say that your chosen brands are a full representation of your personality, but they certainly cover a lot of it. I shop at Albert Heijn, even though there's an Aldi, Lidle and Jumbo at roughly the same distance from my house. I'm sure that will tell you all sorts of things about my personality. Not that all people who go there are the same, but it'll still tell you something about me. Same goes for that my workstation runs Linux, and my laptop is a Mac (with dual boot linux). I don't think now you know exactly what kind of person I am, but they are partial reflections of my personality. What I tolerate, and what I don't. What I prefer and what I disdain.
owenwil 11y ago
This was an awesome read. Thank you for this, I'd never thought of it that way before.
kriro 11y ago
Somewhat ironic item at the end of the article? """If you read this far you should probably follow me on twitter""" with a Twitter icon and follower count. Personal brands are brands, too and I'd count this as advertising as well.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  That's true. At least I went through the trouble of making sure that twitter won't be tracking your reading of the page (hit 'shift-control-q and then ctrl-F5 on firefox if you don't believe me, the whole page is one hit to my server and nothing else) and my 'corporation' isn't trying to sell you anything. That follower count is static and it's updated once per week or so. But reading this page you weren't reading any other and if you tweet the link or pass it on then you've been successfully enlisted in my army ;) See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5LEYG5TqaI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5LEYG5TqaI
  - josephmx 11y ago
    How did you get your whole site running in just 3 requests?
    - jacquesm 11y ago
      Images are in data: urls (so the three requests to generate the page are really only one request to the server), stylesheet is embedded in the page, twitter button hacked until it no longer needed twitter before you click on it, no eye candy beyond the minimum required to get the site working, no external 'fancy' fonts because browser ship with plenty of them to get the message across. I'm still playing code-golf on the stylesheet to make it smaller. 14 Kilo bytes transferred data on that page in total, load time start-to-end 150 ms or so depending on the speed of your connection. I don't like bloat and I like my website to load fast. I also think that's more considerate of visitors on mobile who usually have to pay for their bandwidth and have less of it as well as third world countries. On top of that I don't like external resources controlled by others for tracking or other purposes beyond my control so no trackers, analytics or other bull-shit. It's finished when there is nothing left to remove while still keeping the look exactly like it is right now. You don't need 'page transitions' when the pages load instantaneously :)
danieldk 11y ago
I always wonder to what extend this happens on Hacker News. I am sure that a lot of up/downvoting is done based on product loyalty. But many people here are employed by one of the companies involved in the 'ecosystem wars'. After all, if all the parties in a war are pushing you to ‘join their side’ then they are trying very hard to make you forget that there is another side: your side, non-participation in the war, the ability to opt-out and to refuse to become an unpaid foot-soldier for any one party. I think this is very difficult. E.g. we are all using technology and most of the tech that we can buy or get for 'free' are stakeholders in a war. I try to make my technology choices on technical merits, but often the perceived merits are influenced by what is said on the internet, simply because we can't try before we buy. Also, I noticed the social pressure set up by such wars. E.g. I used to use MacBooks and iPhones, basically because the iPhone was so far ahead that it wan't even funny. Later, I switched from iPhone to Android, mostly because of the price/spec ratio. I noticed an immediate effect in some of my social circles: Apple users spoke as if I betrayed Apple, Android users shrugged with a comment like 'oh, I thought you were an Apple fanboy'. It's really surprising that it doesn't occur to people that you can switch due to technical or budget reasons.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  > simply because we can't try before we buy. In many countries this is not true and a 'right to return' within a certain period of time is proscribed by law unless the item is custom made for you or in auctions.
  - danieldk 11y ago
    That's a good point. But it is very short and often restricted to online/phone/doorstep purchases. E.g. in the EU it's fourteen days: http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/shopping/shopping-abroad/returning-unwanted-goods/index_en.htm http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/shopping/shopping-abroa... Which is short for a product which will take some time to evaluate (e.g. another phone/computer with a different OS).
- bad_user 11y ago
  When it comes to Android vs iOS I think technical or budget reasons are less important than philosophies. Apple got very paternalistic towards their users and this has always manifested in what they allow you to do with their devices. iOS has always had limitations, being defective by design. And so Apple's customers ultimately end up choosing something else, or end up believing that Apple's actions are for their own good. And Android is in many ways iOS's opposite. What really bothers me is that people feel the need to defend their choice, their investment and so they end up believing things and adopting an apologetic attitude just for the sake of thinking about their favorite company as being the good guys. And this is much more than the effects of marketing.
brongondwana 11y ago
This is a really interesting challenge, both as a person being bombarded by this, but also as someone trying to sell something. We had a choice at FastMail a few years ago now, when we were still providing free accounts and trying to use advertising - both to the user of the account and in the signature of outgoing email - to cover the operational costs. In the end we decided to ditch the free accounts entirely, remove all advertising, and focus on providing the best possible experience we can to our paying customers. Which is great, but we still need at least the second order advertising so that new people become aware that our product exists. We know we could grow a lot faster by throwing away our morals - instead we're experimenting very cautiously with placing advertisements while we continue to rely on word of mouth from happy customers as our main way to find new subscribers.
- DarkTree 11y ago
  And there it is. Just by using your company's name, you created an on-the-fly advertisement. Now I know that FastMail is: 1. A paid service 2. A service that cares about their customers 3. A service that doesn't use advertisements to subsidize free accounts
shoo 11y ago
It is insufficient to ignore blatant advertising. For example, if you live in the US, then you are part of a society that has been subjected to ~ 100 years of corporate propaganda. > The prominent business analyst Roger Babson remarked in 1921 that "the war taught us the power of propaganda. Now when we have anything to sell the American people, we know how to sell it." Edward Bernays, too, noted that the "astounding success of propaganda during the war opened the eyes of the intelligent few in all departments of life to the possibilities of regimenting the public mind." [1] Corporate PR got into US schools in the '30s: > Aware that the adult population was cynical about the corporate claims to "service", they aimed specifically at schools, where Young America, their weekly children's magazine that portrayed capitalism as dedicated to looking after them and their communities, was sent to thousands of teachers, who used them in classroom assignments. You and Industry, a series of booklets written in simple language, linked individual prosperity to unregulated industry, and was distributed to public libraries everywhere. One million booklets were distributed every two weeks by the US Chamber of Commerce, which, along with the giant industrial corporations, was also involved in the campaign. [1] Get 'em while they're young, before they have the mental tools to defend themselves. [1] Kerryn Higgs - "Collision Course: Endless Growth on a Finite Planet"
- PopeOfNope 11y ago
  Get 'em while they're young, before they have the mental tools to defend themselves. Explains why socialism is so popular round these parts. (trollgrin)
l33tbro 11y ago
Hate to be that guy, but advertising mames the world go round. Get over it. Honestly surprised undergraduate mental masturbation like this is on the front page.
l33tbro 11y ago
Hate to be that guy, but advertising mames the world go round. Get over it. Honestly surprised undergraduate mental masturbation like this is on the front page.
elisee 11y ago
Related, though less about brands, I really liked "This Video Will Make You Angry" by CGP Grey. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc - Thoughts/memes as germs trying to reproduce and spread, battling for attention and thriving when people endlessly argue as part of an us/them dynamic.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  Oh, that's super good. I'll definitely include that in the post. The funny part is that this itself is a meme but it's like sharing a vaccine rather than a pathogen. I really like the disease analogy. Thank you!
  - PopeOfNope 11y ago
    > The funny part is that this itself is a meme but it's like sharing a vaccine rather than a pathogen. No, it's like those informational commercials raising awareness for muscular dystrophy. Just because you now know it exists doesn't mean you've cured it or even treated it. This stuff works whether you know about it or not.
- lentil_soup 11y ago
  This reminds me a lot of The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene). That book actually coined the word "meme". Mindblowing book if you haven't read it.
  - datashaman 11y ago
    Susan Blackmore's The Meme Machine is the book that brought the ideas home for me. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/254502.The_Meme_Machine https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/254502.The_Meme_Machine
  - frogpelt 11y ago
    Having seen this link, many of the responses in this thread make a lot more sense now. I'm starting to see a meme emerge here.
kitzune 11y ago
I believe that it's not about participating in the war, it's about consciousness. Keeping your mind clear and focused, understanding what kind of information and to the purpose of what you are consuming. Thoroughly separating the information you really need and the one you are forced to deal with. In my mind, the process within your brain is very similar to digestion in its most biological meaning. Your functioning, your physical and mental form depends on what you eat, what amounts of nutritients you get from food. And it's a matter of every individual's choice how to feed your organism and what to demand in return.
saulrh 11y ago
It's not a war. It's evolution. Nature, red in tooth and claw. Ideas live in you, and they die in you, and they evolve. Reproduction: ideas spread, through words, deeds, and creations. Variation: communication inherently introduces errors, and thoughts change over time. Selection: ideas that are forgotten die without spreading. With reproduction, variation, and selection, you have evolution. Religion is a coherent, tenacious, communal meme with unbelievably virulent reproductive mechanisms. A school is a selective breeding program. And advertisements are memetic WMDs, colossal infectious vectors with powerful memetic payloads. Your goal is to infect minds with your idea and to keep them infected long enough for them to take the actions dictated by your meme. Your meme has to be able to reproduce. Your meme has to be transmitted without variation. Your meme has to be selected.
- dhimes 11y ago
  And advertisements are memetic WMDs, colossal infectious vectors with powerful memetic payloads Unfortunately for my budget, in all but the rarest circumstances advertising is quite a weak vector, seldom infectious, and requires constant reinforcement to have even a small effect.
  - justaman 11y ago
    Unfortunately for the U.S, people are all too quick to jump on the [slang] bandwagon, "squad". Dont underestimate even limited exposure. Oldspice/Axe commercials and Uncle Grandpa on Cartoon Network seems to market towards people with ADHD.
- denom 11y ago
  I appreciate your point of view, but doesn't this deny human nature, replacing subjectivity with a kind of sterile mechanistic objectivity? We can make rational choices. For instance, we could remove advertisements from public places and roads.
  - nitrogen 11y ago
    The idea of removing advertisements is itself a meme that propagates and must compete with other memes.
branchless 11y ago
Advertising is generally trying to make us feel bad and want to be something else if we buy product X. This is bad for mental health. I watch zero advertising. It's also key in making us get into debt which then enslaves us. Throw your TV out the window. Put adblock on. I never help these people. Even on a site where I go via google and get their advert questions I do not read the question, I just look at the answers, try to find "I don't know" and click it.
TACIXAT 11y ago
I think the clearest way to put it is that we are the subjects of attack in campaigns of psychological warfare. There are two types of advertising, those that make you aware of a brand you were previously aware of, and those that try to burn one into your head. The first is ok, the more aware of competition we are the better the market is. It is the second one, the one that big brands participate in, that drives me crazy. I want my mind to be clear, not to have a jingle playing in it. I don't want a brand to pop into my head because I see it on a bottle in my peripheral vision. This absolutely influences my choices too. No cable subscription. Adblock. I try to avoid services that are ad supported. Paying to remove ads in apps (I do not want to be served a brand when my alarm goes off). As well, my decisions in building applications. I'm making a paid application with no ads hoping that users will be willing to pay a small price to protect their data from that system. Thanks for writing about this. I feel it's a very important issue and that not having this bombardment should be a human right.
reilly3000 11y ago
I really do fundementally believe in the sanctity of human consciousness. That isn't to say we have some inherent right to true self determination, but it means that it's worth fighting for. I find myself feeding my family with my work in the advertising industry and I've had to grapple with what I've done and will do in the service of advertisers. I've come to the conclusion that advertising and the general thrust of mass communication with commercial interests is a powerful force. As such, I would rather it's power lie in the hands of everyone, not just the state or a religion or strong man. Advertising in the hands of a small family business gives that family the ability to have economic autonomy, and ensures that both purchasing power and political voice is distributed across wide, diverse populations rather than a few powerful elite that control the voice of everything. Advertising, in the hands of the many, breeds democracy. Think of the world-bending power of the printing press. It effectively created the middle class in Europe. It's not just the economic activity it generated. It is the voice it gave to everyone who reached for it. We can't put the genie back in the bottle. I think the way forward is to actually get better at connecting with each other in a decentralized mesh network of demand and desire. If enough people can share what they want in a trusted manner, we can live without ads and live into becoming a real global community.
applecore 11y ago
> I've decided to "opt-out" of this war entirely. Good luck with that, but advertising knows you better than you know yourself.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  For that it has to reach me first. Controlling the vectors for delivery is a first step in controlling an outbreak of some disease.
- crpatino 11y ago
  That's only because people in general know very little about themselves. Socrates knew the answer all that time ago. Who would have thought!
fmdud 11y ago
Hey here's an idea: Maybe read a book. Some good fiction. You're going to get stuff in your head either way, maybe at least make it good stuff.
DanAndersen 11y ago
Shamelessly reposting an earlier comment of mine (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9909259 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9909259) because I feel it's relevant here: --- >For quite some time I've felt that advertising/marketing, at least the sort we've had for the past century or so, is inherently immoral. The fact that it's a necessary evil in our economic system doesn't stop it from being an evil. >Modern advertising is not merely informing people about products and what they do. It's brain-hacking, where advertisers have figured out over decades of experience, and research into human cognitive biases and failure modes, ways of presenting the same product, the same information, but getting a desired response out of the target. >We accept this as a society because we tell ourselves that, as rational human beings, we have the choice to listen to or reject these messages. But modern understandings of cognitive biases show how advertising works on deeper levels, and even works despite us knowing about the tricks that are being used on us. >The problem is that there's a severe imbalance. Advertisers are getting better and better at attacking -- at figuring out precisely what makes us tick, down to the level of pixels on an A/B-tested website. Are people getting any better at defending themselves? Are people being trained in dealing with their cognitive biases to make themselves resistant? Overall, I don't think so.
- maxerickson 11y ago
  Exposure to more and more sophisticated media is bandied about as a potential explanation of the Flynn effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect#Generally_more_stimulating_environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect#Generally_more_st...
- jacquesm 11y ago
  That's a great comment. And you hit the nail on the head with the imbalance, advertisers have had ~100 years to get better at their job, a newly born human has just about 0 chance to successfully defend themselves against the onslaught. It's analogue to VCs that have done 100's of deals dancing with first-time founders.
- necessity 11y ago
  I completely disagree and I find your choice of words - "it's too deep for you", "it's tricking you!", "it's eeevil!" to be distasteful. Seems like a political ad for going to the "righteous side" of being against ads. There has been only one brand that I can recall to have bought because of "hidden" advertising. Budweiser. I used to see the characters from my favorite series drinking it while eating pizza or other delicious food, and whenever I passed by it in the market I had this feeling that it seemed to taste real good. It's piss. I have never bought it again, and I was fully conscious that I thought it was good because I established a relation between it and people I like eating food I like while drinking it. Even if I had not seen this relation, I would not mind. I for one do not want to see the day when trying to sell your fish the best you can - without deceive - becomes immoral or illegal. Before someone says I'm being "tricked in a deeper level" and buying other stuff without noticing, I don't pick brands. I pick whatever is cheaper at the moment since I'm both frugal and unemployed.
wanderingstan 11y ago
Years ago I wrote an essay on a neighboring idea, that Attention is meme sex (and Google is a dating service). http://wanderingstan.com/2006-10-11/attention_is_meme_sex_and_google_is_a_dating_service http://wanderingstan.com/2006-10-11/attention_is_meme_sex_an... >Advertisements are sometimes consensual too, as when people tune in to watch the superbowl ads. But ads often constitute a theft of attention, a non-consensual transmission of ideas. TV advertisements, email spam, billboards, flashing banner ads…they’re all there to steal a little of your attention. The chances of successful replication are lower of course, but the advertiser only needs a few successes to make it worth their while. Not to stretch the analogy too far, but this non-consensual transmission of ideas could aptly be described as a sort of “memetic assault”. Tl;tr Ideas replicate only through attention, thus the battle for our attention.
mirimir 11y ago
I've learned to always consider speakers' agendas. I'm also very careful to avoid viewing ads. Online, I use AdBlock Plus. In meatspace, I just don't look. And when that's not possible, I always focus on deconstruction. It helps that I've worked in both academic science and litigation ;)
- pixl97 11y ago
  >In meatspace, I just don't look Honestly that sounds impossible, practically dangerous. Just go out in a park, people are walking billboards. Clothes, shoes, accessories they all seem to be plastered with logos. Along the road, billboards, many of them electronic flashing messages. Oh and logos over everything, everywhere. Big yellow arches. Communications companies love sticking their corporate image on every surface they can. Oh and a soda company that love putting red and white on everything they can.
  - mirimir 11y ago
    When I notice a logo on someone, my first thought is "What a git!" ;) I remove logos from my stuff, or nuke them with waterproof black marker. I don't look at billboards. And anyway, looking at billboards while driving is dangerous. But yes, it's often impossible to avoid seeing ads. But as I said, it's my practice to focus on deconstruction. I also tend to imagine how to revise them for humor ;)
    - branchless 11y ago
      I don't buy things with logos. I agree it can be kept to a minimum. It depends where you live. London is saturated with advertising everywhere, including on steps. Montreal has far less and we are better off for it. To hell with the revenue.
bikamonki 11y ago
I am immune. The trick is to become conscious of the process. Put another way: the immune mind operates on a higher level of abstraction and can objectively see lower levels - you allow the memes to run in brain cycles but you are su and kill them. It's like when you are watching a movie and at some point you realize (feel) it is fake reality, then you learn to do it on purpose everytime: you watch the movie layer from above, it does kill the idea of the movie to fool you but it is a great mind workout to 'learn to be immune'.
- splawn 11y ago
  Whoops, it looks like you forgot to su and kill the Unix memes you are infected with.
  - bikamonki 11y ago
    Nothing wrong with such memes, they are like good bacteria. We are talking about memes that want you to take actions (coercive memes) like spending your money on one product/service, or join a religion and then bomb the temple of another religion.
    - splawn 11y ago
      I guess my point is no one is truly immune from meme infection as its a side effect of having a brain, its not something you can control.... "Enjoy." "I'm lovin it."
      - mirimir 11y ago
        Some memes immunize us against other memes. As a scientist, I'm immunized against all sorts of religious memes. But of course, carriers of religious memes are typically immunized (at least partially) against scientific memes.
        splawn 11y ago
        I do not disagree with your point. However, if a meme works on the unconscious as many ad campaigns supposedly do, then it seems to me like anyone that makes the claim that they are "immune" should viewed skeptically. No one wants to think that advertising affects their choices, yet advertising seems to work.
systemtrigger 11y ago
Wise synthesis of a growing problem. Author says "I've decided to 'opt-out' of this war entirely." What mental gymnastics does he use when watching a YouTube ad for example? The subliminal effect of much advertising is pernicious and cannot be entirely avoided, it seems to me.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  > What mental gymnastics does he use when watching a YouTube ad for example? No ads on youtube here so no mental gymnastics required. Probably one of ghostery, ublock or umatrix takes care of those for me. The only way they can reliably serve those is when they splice them onto the actual video but that hasn't happened yet. On some sites pre-roll ads do cause the main video to be paused for as long as the ad would run otherwise.
  - systemtrigger 11y ago
    Excellent. Thank you.

82 points by bjxrn 11y ago

I agree completely. I think you have a moral obligation to yourself to avoid advertising as much as is reasonably possible. This means not watching television (unless you're paying to watch it free of advertisements), not reading publications that are heavily supported by advertising (e.g. most magazines) and using an ad blocker everywhere on the web. You will never be able to completely avoid advertising without taking yourself out of mainstream society, but you can avoid the most insidious parts, and you can try very hard to condition yourself against the rest of it. The "second-order" advertising (e.g. critic recommendations, word of mouth) is much harder to deal with, especially if you believe that some people have good, unbiased, not-unduly-influenced opinions that you will benefit from listening to. My only recommendation is to curate the people whose opinions you listen to very carefully, and think hard about who they might be (possibly unwittingly) influenced by. I am sympathetic to the argument that advertising pays for many of the things I like, particularly on the web. But I don't think that argument is compelling enough for it to be worth handing over control of my head. Of course, advertising is only one factor, though it is probably the most important factor. Other systems competing for a share of your mind include religions, political parties and/or systems of political thought, philosophical systems, programming languages and/or communities (eg functional vs. object oriented), sports teams, national identities, racial identities, and more. You may want to allow some of these access to a share of your mind (e.g. many people enjoy supporting a sports team, even when the rational part of their brain knows that their sports team isn't inherently better than any other). But for the most part, I think it's better to avoid falling into these traps. The best exposition I can recall is one of Paul Graham's earlier essays, "Keep Your Identity Small"[0]. I would probably argue a similar point, but phrase it differently - keep your identity broad. Instead of thinking of yourself as a "Ruby programmer" or a "functional programmer" it is better to think of yourself as a "programmer" (and even better not to think of yourself as a programmer at all!). Instead of thinking of yourself as American, or Chinese, or as black, or white, try to think of yourself as a human. The broader you can make your identity, the less chance you have of accidentally falling prey to any of the theories competing for a space in your head. [0] http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html

ectoplasm 11y ago
Why do you think YC finances HN? Also, it's quite possible to watch TV shows for free without advertisements. And, how do you get around product placement?
- kittenfluff 11y ago
  Like I said, "you will never be able to completely avoid advertising without taking yourself out of mainstream society" and "second-order advertising is much harder to deal with". I don't claim to be immune to advertising, or know how to avoid all of it! But knowing you are susceptible to advertising is the first step towards not letting it influence you (too much).
harperlee 11y ago
> The "second-order" advertising (e.g. critic recommendations, word of mouth) is much harder to deal with, especially if you believe that some people have good, unbiased, not-unduly-influenced opinions that you will benefit from listening to. My only recommendation is to curate the people whose opinions you listen to very carefully, and think hard about who they might be (possibly unwittingly) influenced by. But we rely on other people's opinion precisely to avoid thinking hard about everything, which would be overkill at best, and could even kill you at worst. What you say is idyllic, but in practice we just go with the flow. It's easy and safe, from an evolutionary point of view. Choosing requires energy, time and attention [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overchoice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overchoice], and it has a big opportunity cost [http://www.brainpickings.org/2013/11/27/the-psychology-of-self-control/ http://www.brainpickings.org/2013/11/27/the-psychology-of-se...]. Do I need to thoroughly bet every "expert" that I listen to? In practice, this is infeasible. You definitely should do it for important stuff, but advertising covers many other unimportant things (such as yoghurt brands) for which it's economically optimal to just assume everyone is an expert. Also, you approach advertising and human bias such as social proof as only bad things, and I think one needs to also consider the good side of it. Even for things not so trivial as yoghurt, perhaps if I spend 40 hours choosing for the best car I can make an optimal decision; or perhaps choosing the one that is advertised the most is sufficient; I get a suboptimal choice but psychologically it's less demanding; socially is more acceptable (as I have the same car as the rest); heuristically it might even hold some intelligence (advertising power carries some information about financial strength, financial strength about solid business, and solid business about good products). Typically, you will shortlist a couple of cars and try them. It's a matter of being a satisficer and not a maximizer [http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-you-make-decisions-says-a-lot-about-how-happy-you-are-1412614997 http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-you-make-decisions-says-a-lo...].

rm_-rf_slash 11y ago

Perhaps this is my inner Ultra-American speaking, but I think it's perfectly fine for people to feel aligned, even owned, by their brands. Hell, look around you. How many items do you see that were NOT made by a corporation? The brands I choose are a reflection of my personality. I shop at Wegmans instead of having groceries delivered because I like their quality and I can always run into people I know. I buy Apple products because they appear more integrated and polished than other consumer tech, and that is an important aspect of my personality. I'm not a shill (ok, I did work for Apple a few years ago), but rather I am so content with the brands I choose that I enjoy telling others about them.

jacquesm 11y ago
> Perhaps this is my inner Ultra-American speaking, but I think it's perfectly fine for people to feel aligned, even owned, by their brands. I strongly disagree with that. Brands should not 'own people', brands should be at best an indicator of what you can expect from a product quality or service wise. And what's being American (Ultra-American??) got to do with it? > Hell, look around you. How many items do you see that were NOT made by a corporation? That does not have anything to do with it. Having corporations produce goods is fine, having them try to hack our brains is not. > The brands I choose are a reflection of my personality. Please read 'The Space Merchants', one of my favorite books which is a frontal assault on that one sentence.
- tinco 11y ago
  An Ultra-American is so capitalist that they prefer plutocracy over democracy. It's some sort of consequence of the cold war I'd guess. I've not read 'The Space Merchants' but I wonder how it assaults that sentence as I believe it is generally true. That's not to say that your chosen brands are a full representation of your personality, but they certainly cover a lot of it. I shop at Albert Heijn, even though there's an Aldi, Lidle and Jumbo at roughly the same distance from my house. I'm sure that will tell you all sorts of things about my personality. Not that all people who go there are the same, but it'll still tell you something about me. Same goes for that my workstation runs Linux, and my laptop is a Mac (with dual boot linux). I don't think now you know exactly what kind of person I am, but they are partial reflections of my personality. What I tolerate, and what I don't. What I prefer and what I disdain.

owenwil 11y ago

This was an awesome read. Thank you for this, I'd never thought of it that way before.

kriro 11y ago

Somewhat ironic item at the end of the article? """If you read this far you should probably follow me on twitter""" with a Twitter icon and follower count. Personal brands are brands, too and I'd count this as advertising as well.

jacquesm 11y ago
That's true. At least I went through the trouble of making sure that twitter won't be tracking your reading of the page (hit 'shift-control-q and then ctrl-F5 on firefox if you don't believe me, the whole page is one hit to my server and nothing else) and my 'corporation' isn't trying to sell you anything. That follower count is static and it's updated once per week or so. But reading this page you weren't reading any other and if you tweet the link or pass it on then you've been successfully enlisted in my army ;) See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5LEYG5TqaI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5LEYG5TqaI
- josephmx 11y ago
  How did you get your whole site running in just 3 requests?
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    Images are in data: urls (so the three requests to generate the page are really only one request to the server), stylesheet is embedded in the page, twitter button hacked until it no longer needed twitter before you click on it, no eye candy beyond the minimum required to get the site working, no external 'fancy' fonts because browser ship with plenty of them to get the message across. I'm still playing code-golf on the stylesheet to make it smaller. 14 Kilo bytes transferred data on that page in total, load time start-to-end 150 ms or so depending on the speed of your connection. I don't like bloat and I like my website to load fast. I also think that's more considerate of visitors on mobile who usually have to pay for their bandwidth and have less of it as well as third world countries. On top of that I don't like external resources controlled by others for tracking or other purposes beyond my control so no trackers, analytics or other bull-shit. It's finished when there is nothing left to remove while still keeping the look exactly like it is right now. You don't need 'page transitions' when the pages load instantaneously :)

danieldk 11y ago

I always wonder to what extend this happens on Hacker News. I am sure that a lot of up/downvoting is done based on product loyalty. But many people here are employed by one of the companies involved in the 'ecosystem wars'. After all, if all the parties in a war are pushing you to ‘join their side’ then they are trying very hard to make you forget that there is another side: your side, non-participation in the war, the ability to opt-out and to refuse to become an unpaid foot-soldier for any one party. I think this is very difficult. E.g. we are all using technology and most of the tech that we can buy or get for 'free' are stakeholders in a war. I try to make my technology choices on technical merits, but often the perceived merits are influenced by what is said on the internet, simply because we can't try before we buy. Also, I noticed the social pressure set up by such wars. E.g. I used to use MacBooks and iPhones, basically because the iPhone was so far ahead that it wan't even funny. Later, I switched from iPhone to Android, mostly because of the price/spec ratio. I noticed an immediate effect in some of my social circles: Apple users spoke as if I betrayed Apple, Android users shrugged with a comment like 'oh, I thought you were an Apple fanboy'. It's really surprising that it doesn't occur to people that you can switch due to technical or budget reasons.

jacquesm 11y ago
> simply because we can't try before we buy. In many countries this is not true and a 'right to return' within a certain period of time is proscribed by law unless the item is custom made for you or in auctions.
- danieldk 11y ago
  That's a good point. But it is very short and often restricted to online/phone/doorstep purchases. E.g. in the EU it's fourteen days: http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/shopping/shopping-abroad/returning-unwanted-goods/index_en.htm http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/shopping/shopping-abroa... Which is short for a product which will take some time to evaluate (e.g. another phone/computer with a different OS).
bad_user 11y ago
When it comes to Android vs iOS I think technical or budget reasons are less important than philosophies. Apple got very paternalistic towards their users and this has always manifested in what they allow you to do with their devices. iOS has always had limitations, being defective by design. And so Apple's customers ultimately end up choosing something else, or end up believing that Apple's actions are for their own good. And Android is in many ways iOS's opposite. What really bothers me is that people feel the need to defend their choice, their investment and so they end up believing things and adopting an apologetic attitude just for the sake of thinking about their favorite company as being the good guys. And this is much more than the effects of marketing.

brongondwana 11y ago

This is a really interesting challenge, both as a person being bombarded by this, but also as someone trying to sell something. We had a choice at FastMail a few years ago now, when we were still providing free accounts and trying to use advertising - both to the user of the account and in the signature of outgoing email - to cover the operational costs. In the end we decided to ditch the free accounts entirely, remove all advertising, and focus on providing the best possible experience we can to our paying customers. Which is great, but we still need at least the second order advertising so that new people become aware that our product exists. We know we could grow a lot faster by throwing away our morals - instead we're experimenting very cautiously with placing advertisements while we continue to rely on word of mouth from happy customers as our main way to find new subscribers.

DarkTree 11y ago
And there it is. Just by using your company's name, you created an on-the-fly advertisement. Now I know that FastMail is: 1. A paid service 2. A service that cares about their customers 3. A service that doesn't use advertisements to subsidize free accounts

shoo 11y ago

It is insufficient to ignore blatant advertising. For example, if you live in the US, then you are part of a society that has been subjected to ~ 100 years of corporate propaganda. > The prominent business analyst Roger Babson remarked in 1921 that "the war taught us the power of propaganda. Now when we have anything to sell the American people, we know how to sell it." Edward Bernays, too, noted that the "astounding success of propaganda during the war opened the eyes of the intelligent few in all departments of life to the possibilities of regimenting the public mind." [1] Corporate PR got into US schools in the '30s: > Aware that the adult population was cynical about the corporate claims to "service", they aimed specifically at schools, where Young America, their weekly children's magazine that portrayed capitalism as dedicated to looking after them and their communities, was sent to thousands of teachers, who used them in classroom assignments. You and Industry, a series of booklets written in simple language, linked individual prosperity to unregulated industry, and was distributed to public libraries everywhere. One million booklets were distributed every two weeks by the US Chamber of Commerce, which, along with the giant industrial corporations, was also involved in the campaign. [1] Get 'em while they're young, before they have the mental tools to defend themselves. [1] Kerryn Higgs - "Collision Course: Endless Growth on a Finite Planet"

PopeOfNope 11y ago
Get 'em while they're young, before they have the mental tools to defend themselves. Explains why socialism is so popular round these parts. (trollgrin)

l33tbro 11y ago

Hate to be that guy, but advertising mames the world go round. Get over it. Honestly surprised undergraduate mental masturbation like this is on the front page.

l33tbro 11y ago

Hate to be that guy, but advertising mames the world go round. Get over it. Honestly surprised undergraduate mental masturbation like this is on the front page.

elisee 11y ago

Related, though less about brands, I really liked "This Video Will Make You Angry" by CGP Grey. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc - Thoughts/memes as germs trying to reproduce and spread, battling for attention and thriving when people endlessly argue as part of an us/them dynamic.

jacquesm 11y ago
Oh, that's super good. I'll definitely include that in the post. The funny part is that this itself is a meme but it's like sharing a vaccine rather than a pathogen. I really like the disease analogy. Thank you!
- PopeOfNope 11y ago
  > The funny part is that this itself is a meme but it's like sharing a vaccine rather than a pathogen. No, it's like those informational commercials raising awareness for muscular dystrophy. Just because you now know it exists doesn't mean you've cured it or even treated it. This stuff works whether you know about it or not.
lentil_soup 11y ago
This reminds me a lot of The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene). That book actually coined the word "meme". Mindblowing book if you haven't read it.
- datashaman 11y ago
  Susan Blackmore's The Meme Machine is the book that brought the ideas home for me. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/254502.The_Meme_Machine https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/254502.The_Meme_Machine
- frogpelt 11y ago
  Having seen this link, many of the responses in this thread make a lot more sense now. I'm starting to see a meme emerge here.

kitzune 11y ago

I believe that it's not about participating in the war, it's about consciousness. Keeping your mind clear and focused, understanding what kind of information and to the purpose of what you are consuming. Thoroughly separating the information you really need and the one you are forced to deal with. In my mind, the process within your brain is very similar to digestion in its most biological meaning. Your functioning, your physical and mental form depends on what you eat, what amounts of nutritients you get from food. And it's a matter of every individual's choice how to feed your organism and what to demand in return.

saulrh 11y ago

It's not a war. It's evolution. Nature, red in tooth and claw. Ideas live in you, and they die in you, and they evolve. Reproduction: ideas spread, through words, deeds, and creations. Variation: communication inherently introduces errors, and thoughts change over time. Selection: ideas that are forgotten die without spreading. With reproduction, variation, and selection, you have evolution. Religion is a coherent, tenacious, communal meme with unbelievably virulent reproductive mechanisms. A school is a selective breeding program. And advertisements are memetic WMDs, colossal infectious vectors with powerful memetic payloads. Your goal is to infect minds with your idea and to keep them infected long enough for them to take the actions dictated by your meme. Your meme has to be able to reproduce. Your meme has to be transmitted without variation. Your meme has to be selected.

dhimes 11y ago
And advertisements are memetic WMDs, colossal infectious vectors with powerful memetic payloads Unfortunately for my budget, in all but the rarest circumstances advertising is quite a weak vector, seldom infectious, and requires constant reinforcement to have even a small effect.
- justaman 11y ago
  Unfortunately for the U.S, people are all too quick to jump on the [slang] bandwagon, "squad". Dont underestimate even limited exposure. Oldspice/Axe commercials and Uncle Grandpa on Cartoon Network seems to market towards people with ADHD.
denom 11y ago
I appreciate your point of view, but doesn't this deny human nature, replacing subjectivity with a kind of sterile mechanistic objectivity? We can make rational choices. For instance, we could remove advertisements from public places and roads.
- nitrogen 11y ago
  The idea of removing advertisements is itself a meme that propagates and must compete with other memes.

branchless 11y ago

Advertising is generally trying to make us feel bad and want to be something else if we buy product X. This is bad for mental health. I watch zero advertising. It's also key in making us get into debt which then enslaves us. Throw your TV out the window. Put adblock on. I never help these people. Even on a site where I go via google and get their advert questions I do not read the question, I just look at the answers, try to find "I don't know" and click it.

TACIXAT 11y ago

I think the clearest way to put it is that we are the subjects of attack in campaigns of psychological warfare. There are two types of advertising, those that make you aware of a brand you were previously aware of, and those that try to burn one into your head. The first is ok, the more aware of competition we are the better the market is. It is the second one, the one that big brands participate in, that drives me crazy. I want my mind to be clear, not to have a jingle playing in it. I don't want a brand to pop into my head because I see it on a bottle in my peripheral vision. This absolutely influences my choices too. No cable subscription. Adblock. I try to avoid services that are ad supported. Paying to remove ads in apps (I do not want to be served a brand when my alarm goes off). As well, my decisions in building applications. I'm making a paid application with no ads hoping that users will be willing to pay a small price to protect their data from that system. Thanks for writing about this. I feel it's a very important issue and that not having this bombardment should be a human right.

reilly3000 11y ago

I really do fundementally believe in the sanctity of human consciousness. That isn't to say we have some inherent right to true self determination, but it means that it's worth fighting for. I find myself feeding my family with my work in the advertising industry and I've had to grapple with what I've done and will do in the service of advertisers. I've come to the conclusion that advertising and the general thrust of mass communication with commercial interests is a powerful force. As such, I would rather it's power lie in the hands of everyone, not just the state or a religion or strong man. Advertising in the hands of a small family business gives that family the ability to have economic autonomy, and ensures that both purchasing power and political voice is distributed across wide, diverse populations rather than a few powerful elite that control the voice of everything. Advertising, in the hands of the many, breeds democracy. Think of the world-bending power of the printing press. It effectively created the middle class in Europe. It's not just the economic activity it generated. It is the voice it gave to everyone who reached for it. We can't put the genie back in the bottle. I think the way forward is to actually get better at connecting with each other in a decentralized mesh network of demand and desire. If enough people can share what they want in a trusted manner, we can live without ads and live into becoming a real global community.

applecore 11y ago

> I've decided to "opt-out" of this war entirely. Good luck with that, but advertising knows you better than you know yourself.

jacquesm 11y ago
For that it has to reach me first. Controlling the vectors for delivery is a first step in controlling an outbreak of some disease.
crpatino 11y ago
That's only because people in general know very little about themselves. Socrates knew the answer all that time ago. Who would have thought!

fmdud 11y ago

Hey here's an idea: Maybe read a book. Some good fiction. You're going to get stuff in your head either way, maybe at least make it good stuff.

DanAndersen 11y ago

Shamelessly reposting an earlier comment of mine (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9909259 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9909259) because I feel it's relevant here: --- >For quite some time I've felt that advertising/marketing, at least the sort we've had for the past century or so, is inherently immoral. The fact that it's a necessary evil in our economic system doesn't stop it from being an evil. >Modern advertising is not merely informing people about products and what they do. It's brain-hacking, where advertisers have figured out over decades of experience, and research into human cognitive biases and failure modes, ways of presenting the same product, the same information, but getting a desired response out of the target. >We accept this as a society because we tell ourselves that, as rational human beings, we have the choice to listen to or reject these messages. But modern understandings of cognitive biases show how advertising works on deeper levels, and even works despite us knowing about the tricks that are being used on us. >The problem is that there's a severe imbalance. Advertisers are getting better and better at attacking -- at figuring out precisely what makes us tick, down to the level of pixels on an A/B-tested website. Are people getting any better at defending themselves? Are people being trained in dealing with their cognitive biases to make themselves resistant? Overall, I don't think so.

maxerickson 11y ago
Exposure to more and more sophisticated media is bandied about as a potential explanation of the Flynn effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect#Generally_more_stimulating_environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect#Generally_more_st...
jacquesm 11y ago
That's a great comment. And you hit the nail on the head with the imbalance, advertisers have had ~100 years to get better at their job, a newly born human has just about 0 chance to successfully defend themselves against the onslaught. It's analogue to VCs that have done 100's of deals dancing with first-time founders.
necessity 11y ago
I completely disagree and I find your choice of words - "it's too deep for you", "it's tricking you!", "it's eeevil!" to be distasteful. Seems like a political ad for going to the "righteous side" of being against ads. There has been only one brand that I can recall to have bought because of "hidden" advertising. Budweiser. I used to see the characters from my favorite series drinking it while eating pizza or other delicious food, and whenever I passed by it in the market I had this feeling that it seemed to taste real good. It's piss. I have never bought it again, and I was fully conscious that I thought it was good because I established a relation between it and people I like eating food I like while drinking it. Even if I had not seen this relation, I would not mind. I for one do not want to see the day when trying to sell your fish the best you can - without deceive - becomes immoral or illegal. Before someone says I'm being "tricked in a deeper level" and buying other stuff without noticing, I don't pick brands. I pick whatever is cheaper at the moment since I'm both frugal and unemployed.

wanderingstan 11y ago

Years ago I wrote an essay on a neighboring idea, that Attention is meme sex (and Google is a dating service). http://wanderingstan.com/2006-10-11/attention_is_meme_sex_and_google_is_a_dating_service http://wanderingstan.com/2006-10-11/attention_is_meme_sex_an... >Advertisements are sometimes consensual too, as when people tune in to watch the superbowl ads. But ads often constitute a theft of attention, a non-consensual transmission of ideas. TV advertisements, email spam, billboards, flashing banner ads…they’re all there to steal a little of your attention. The chances of successful replication are lower of course, but the advertiser only needs a few successes to make it worth their while. Not to stretch the analogy too far, but this non-consensual transmission of ideas could aptly be described as a sort of “memetic assault”. Tl;tr Ideas replicate only through attention, thus the battle for our attention.

mirimir 11y ago

I've learned to always consider speakers' agendas. I'm also very careful to avoid viewing ads. Online, I use AdBlock Plus. In meatspace, I just don't look. And when that's not possible, I always focus on deconstruction. It helps that I've worked in both academic science and litigation ;)

pixl97 11y ago
>In meatspace, I just don't look Honestly that sounds impossible, practically dangerous. Just go out in a park, people are walking billboards. Clothes, shoes, accessories they all seem to be plastered with logos. Along the road, billboards, many of them electronic flashing messages. Oh and logos over everything, everywhere. Big yellow arches. Communications companies love sticking their corporate image on every surface they can. Oh and a soda company that love putting red and white on everything they can.
- mirimir 11y ago
  When I notice a logo on someone, my first thought is "What a git!" ;) I remove logos from my stuff, or nuke them with waterproof black marker. I don't look at billboards. And anyway, looking at billboards while driving is dangerous. But yes, it's often impossible to avoid seeing ads. But as I said, it's my practice to focus on deconstruction. I also tend to imagine how to revise them for humor ;)
  - branchless 11y ago
    I don't buy things with logos. I agree it can be kept to a minimum. It depends where you live. London is saturated with advertising everywhere, including on steps. Montreal has far less and we are better off for it. To hell with the revenue.

bikamonki 11y ago

I am immune. The trick is to become conscious of the process. Put another way: the immune mind operates on a higher level of abstraction and can objectively see lower levels - you allow the memes to run in brain cycles but you are su and kill them. It's like when you are watching a movie and at some point you realize (feel) it is fake reality, then you learn to do it on purpose everytime: you watch the movie layer from above, it does kill the idea of the movie to fool you but it is a great mind workout to 'learn to be immune'.

splawn 11y ago
Whoops, it looks like you forgot to su and kill the Unix memes you are infected with.
- bikamonki 11y ago
  Nothing wrong with such memes, they are like good bacteria. We are talking about memes that want you to take actions (coercive memes) like spending your money on one product/service, or join a religion and then bomb the temple of another religion.
  - splawn 11y ago
    I guess my point is no one is truly immune from meme infection as its a side effect of having a brain, its not something you can control.... "Enjoy." "I'm lovin it."
    - mirimir 11y ago
      Some memes immunize us against other memes. As a scientist, I'm immunized against all sorts of religious memes. But of course, carriers of religious memes are typically immunized (at least partially) against scientific memes.
      - splawn 11y ago
        I do not disagree with your point. However, if a meme works on the unconscious as many ad campaigns supposedly do, then it seems to me like anyone that makes the claim that they are "immune" should viewed skeptically. No one wants to think that advertising affects their choices, yet advertising seems to work.

systemtrigger 11y ago

Wise synthesis of a growing problem. Author says "I've decided to 'opt-out' of this war entirely." What mental gymnastics does he use when watching a YouTube ad for example? The subliminal effect of much advertising is pernicious and cannot be entirely avoided, it seems to me.

jacquesm 11y ago
> What mental gymnastics does he use when watching a YouTube ad for example? No ads on youtube here so no mental gymnastics required. Probably one of ghostery, ublock or umatrix takes care of those for me. The only way they can reliably serve those is when they splice them onto the actual video but that hasn't happened yet. On some sites pre-roll ads do cause the main video to be paused for as long as the ad would run otherwise.
- systemtrigger 11y ago
  Excellent. Thank you.