Hacker News Reader

Comment by anonyme-honteux | Hacker News Reader

"How xxx Corrupted Advertising" is a really strange titlre.

It seems to assume that Advertising being corrupted is a new thing?

And that the Elon guy is somehow a genius for noticing a part of the problem?

The whole history of advertising seems to indicate that in fact Advertising was designed to make us buy things we don't need, not designed to talk to the better angels of our nature.

Edward Bernays, aka Freud nephew, was a pioneer in Public Relations (called Propaganda at the time, they were not afraid of the word) and one of his greatest success was to convince women to start smoking en masse. He did that by branding cigarettes as feminist "Torches of Freedom" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays

If that's not corrupt, I don't know what is.

I mean the whole industry would look really really different if they had to give up misoginy. Think "Cheat On Your Girlfriend, Not On Your Workout” (Reebook) and 42.000 other examples

View on HN

Strange choice to stress misogyny. Women see attractive models in advertising, they think "unachievable beauty ideals, I feel pressured". I see the same, I think "it exploited my biology to grab my attention, damn it worked again". Is it misogyny or is it mis-everyone, let's make money?

I'm pretty certain that the advertising of women's things using beautiful, scantily dressed, women must work, it's being going on for long enough.

Obviously, the primary effects are those that impact women, but things can annoy you and still be misogyny.

> Women see attractive models in advertising, they think "unachievable beauty ideals, I feel pressured".

And they are right.

> I see the same, I think "it exploited my biology to grab my attention, damn it worked again".

And you are right.

> Is it let's make money?

Yes

> Is it misogyny or is it mis-everyone?

It is misoginy, and misoginy is always is mis-everyone - but a tiny elite who benefits from it.

Advertisers for example.

TODO: Add "why-not-both?" meme here.

> Is it misogyny or is it mis-everyone

The word you might want here is misanthropy "a dislike of humankind".

That's a useless word though.

It's like "all lives matter". Nobody but psychopaths disagree so why do people bring it up? What's the point?

Mostly to defend the status quo where some lives matter less than others.

> It's like "all lives matter". Nobody but psychopaths disagree so why do people bring it up?

I only have anecdata to go on, but in literally every case I've seen, the reason has been "because of (and in response to) someone else implying otherwise".

Sorry but that's also useless until we know whose lives are in danger and who is an obstacle to their lives being in danger.

Because if the motivation is to save lies, why would you keep that information secret?

Maybe you can ask your friends if they have something more precise and more useful that their ego being hurt?

That could be for example "people who have a tendency to do depression are at a higher risk of suicide because Facebook has been optimizing user engagement like a psychopath".

Now yes I would be interested because that looks like an area where you can have a meaningful positive effect in the real world.

Ad tech is applied sociology. What you're talking about is a different advertising industry, one that deals with human psychology.

Ad fraud is essentially incorrect/fraudulent sampling that leads to biased results. (Usually with a hidden motive.)

Which is why in traditional advertising sampling and data collection is done by government-mandated entities. Digital advertising has been "disrupted" by entities like Google and Facebook, but eventually we'll get there too.

Advertising to designed to make you choose a particular company over another when you go to buy that thing you don't need.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com