The fear of being manipulated from a proposal to subliminal marketing

An Savant* thinks manipulation is the act of coercion through lies and deception to be persuaded to make a decision that is based on false beliefs or false emotions: “I love you” must mean “I like you, I adore you, I admire you”, rather than just words. To the Normal Person*, the words are enough. They don’t need to MEAN much more than “I will keep behaving the same way as I behave now forever unless you make me change. I will change for you too if you ask me to.”

A Normal Person* essentially demands you to lie and pretend, to play a role (of a husband or a wife or a trusted politician) convincingly enough that they can then put their trust in you. Then they “hate being manipulated” when it turns out you were not what you said you were. What this means is that they expect the lie to keep on going. They expect you to keep saying the right things that their friends and family can approve of until you die. If you are not willing to do that, you are manipulative. The fact that you lie your entire life is not.

What the Normal Person* fear is being led to make a decision that would make them unpopular. As long as they can say that they made the correct decision regardless of what they were “sold”, they’re fine. In dating, it means that the guy needs to say the right things and convince the girl that he knows what is expected, like in a school exam. For a Savants*, it is the biggest mistake ever to pass that exam, so always remember to have at least one unredeemable flaw, like being open to polygamyORpolygynandry¹, for instance!

Being scared of advertising and targeted ads

For the longest time I’ve wondered what is scary so scary about targeted ads. I feel like the fear of them is very much based on bad logic and overblown dangers, but I still couldn’t get to the bottom of it. But here it is:

the Normal Person* hate the idea of being SINGLED OUT, and TARGETED on their own; aka. being manipulated to make an independent buying decision. They want their buying choices to be popular, and they want their neighbors to see the same ads as they do, so they can join their efforts in buying the right product. If one of them is shown a different ad to the other, they fear that some information is kept from one of them and given to someone else, and that their choice is then warped.

The thing is; all ads are targeted at someone. Without ad targeting, everyone is being served the same ad no matter what they are interested in. Targeted ads either do not bother non-mothers and childless people with Pampers diapers, but show them to people who have small children. Also, if the same product can be used in several different ways, for instance, you can use the same facial wipe to clean baby’s bottoms or your own makeup, the ads served would be based on whether the viewer has a baby or whether they watch makeup tutorials on YouTube already. Another, much more difficult to implement idea is to use subliminal messaging in the ad based on the viewers social profile, but that does require a whole lot more work than most advertisers are ready to pay for.

The funny thing is, it is the Savants* that can use subliminal messaging on the Normal Person*, who are easily coerced to follow a pack leader. The Savants* hate the idea of subliminal messaging but rarely fall victim to it, because they are too self-aware for it. They can be scared off from buying anything, though, because they fear everything that they want is a result of subliminal messaging. I, personally, buy stuff BECAUSE I like the ad. I am cheerfully a victim of a commercial; I buy the product to THANK THE ADVERTISER for a job well done. I love a good ad, and if I am in the market for the product and there is virtually no difference between two competing product, I give the thumbs up to the one with the better advert (that made me laugh). I can also be coerced to make the opposite decision by repeating an irritating jingle or something spoken with an irritating voice or by an irritating person, and I’m making a mental note to NEVER touch that product for as long as I live. Activia and Danone yoghurts fall into that category, even though it is, logically speaking, a superior product. Was I manipulated to NOT BUY? I don’t think so. That was a freaking accident, wasn’t it? The Coca-Cola company has some explaining to do, though. How in the hell did you make me go buy another 3 giant bottles of Zero just to get through all the writing I do, huh? I haven’t even seen an ad for Zero that I can remember. Subliminal? Hardly. I pick a paid product placement in a movie in a heartbeat; Jason fucking Statham or any character he plays DOES NOT drink Corona Light, especially when he would have to self-identify as “a Corona-man”. 😀 I think it was in Fast and Furious 7 if I recall, that had a scene where he was asked which brand of beer he would prefer, and his answer did not sound like something he would drink unless it was the only thing available. Missed by most, I admit, but as far as subliminal advertising goes, it is a HUGE jump from a mainly female consumer to a hard and rugged tough guy audience. Would work much better in a chic flick, unless the very point was to target a new audience… Probably failing.

If you are afraid of subliminal advertising, that’s the stuff you need to become aware of. When is a product placed in front of your eyes in a way that clearly shows it’s brand, in a context that isn’t a clear ad? Movies are primarily a marketing venue in such context. If you loved the Sex and The City movies, you should be afraid. The movie was NOTHING but a 2 hour commercial that you paid to watch. If you didn’t notice that you were continually advertised different designer clothing brands, you seriously need to be afraid of what people feed into your consciousness. The TV series wasn’t NEARLY as bad, but the amount of times Manolo Blahnik were mentioned in the series should have tweaked you to caution, right? You should also know that brands were paying big bucks to be mentioned in that series, and they do pay huge amounts of money to Oprah Windfrey to “give away stuff”. This all falls under the category of subliminal advertising; you link the product to your favorite characters or your role models and then you HAVE TO buy the product.

Compared to that, having Facebook or Google to serve you adverts of products you are already interested in is so very innocent, and also, more helpful than harmful. (You have already stated interest by liking certain pages, entering your age and gender into the database, and by making friends who also like the same stuff. If you don’t want the adverts to be targeted, never fill out any information into your profile nor click “like”, also, stop using Google. You’ll still get ads, but they’ll be more random or targeted to your location if you left your location settings on your mobile or computer.)

To fight fear, know how it works

To know how stuff works is the best way to overcome the fear of it. If someone falls for subliminal marketing, they are outwitted by another person. Fair game. If you make that easy for them by completely ignoring everything that has to do with it, then hell, you deserve to be running after products you don’t need or want.

Fear breeds in the mind of the ignorant, and is, unfortunately often spread by the ignorant who appear knowledgeable even to those who normally would have the brain capacity to understand what is going on if they took a moment to think about it.

The unrealistic fear of, big companies, for instance, is fuelled by nothing more than a witch hunt when the huge companies HAVE TO abide by the rules because they are EVERYWHERE. It is the small shops that can and do bend the rules all the time, because they are running out of money all the time, nobody pays attention to them, and they can skip a few regulations here or there without causing a public outcry. A massive company like Coca-Cola wouldn’t get away with the slightest of thing anymore, but a sweat shop somewhere can make their employees work 20 hours a day and sleep on the floor behind the counter (has happened) for years before anyone takes notice. The idea that the big companies pay for special licenses… Yeah, they probably do, because they can afford to, but to do what? Poison people on the large scale? Hardly. And, also, you know Coca-Cola or McDonald’s is not exactly health food, right? You still buy it. Nobody is forcing you to take that step. And, at the end of the day, you KNOW what is in a Maccas burger, but what your nanna made… Hmm. Anyone’s guess. Then they be like: “Oh but there is something addictive about it?” Uh. Yes. A product that has been honed to perfection. The fact that you never get tired of the taste. The superior quality of the product. It is freaking addictive, and thankfully so.

Cheers.

1. Depending on context. Some time ago, I used the term polygamy to mean either the generic concept of polygamous marriage or a MM+FF+ -type marriage or poly-committed relationship. ↩

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