A brief, weird history of brainwashing
technologyreview.com
technologyreview.com
- advertising is ~1/5th of US economy (backed with facts)
- all advertising is brainwashing (your personal opinion)Maybe its benign brainwashing, or you'd choose a different word because brainwashing has a lot of connotations. But that is factually what it's trying to do
- Your neighbor knows you need a new table and their brother sells tables so they tell you about it and offer you a special deal.
- Your daughter is an avowed pacifist who tries very hard to convince you that you should move your family to another country and stop paying taxes to one that is currently waging a war.
- Your son really hates broccoli and pleads with you to make carrots for dinner side instead.
- A company that makes packaged dessert foods pays theaters to covertly insert subliminal imagery into film reels designed to make viewers crave their food.
- A group takes over a rural commune and recruits people from broken homes, convincing them to become sex slaves and take part in ritual suicide pacts over the course of many years of sophisticated psychological manipulation and isolation techniques.
- A charistmatic totalitarian politician spends years on the stump gradually convinging a voting majority of what used to be a liberal democracy that directing all national production toward warfare, attempting to conquer their entire continent, and exterminating an entire race of nationless people is the only way forward for human progress.
Are all of these activities morally equivalent? Does it make sense to call all of them by the same term? Or does that decrease, rather than increase, the usefulness with which we can discuss these kinds of things?
That said, I can't disagree that 20% of a national economy being devoted to marketing and advertising seems unlikely to be a socially optimal allocation of economic activity.
Is done scientifically and at huge scale by powerful entities
& is non-consentual, almost everyone would rather not see ads or internalize their ideas. (Coors beer is cool and if you drink it women will like you more, yuck, who wants to believe that)
But yeah, you're right that just influencing thoughts is not the only part of the definition. And really past a certain point anything is impossible to define, so these arguments are always a little weird. Eg. I challenge you to give an airtight definition of what is a chair.
Calling advertizment brainwashing is certainly a little provocative, & in my opinion perfectly correct given the scale and goals. But I can see how it can be annoying in retrospect. Glad we agree that spending that much on it is sad
brainwashing - noun
1. a forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up basic political, social, or religious beliefs and attitudes and to accept contrasting regimented ideas
2. persuasion by propaganda or salesmanshipMost people do not view being "convinced" as brainwashing. They see brainwashing as a sub-conscious activity. They view being convinced as a conscious one.
I think this definition is too broad myself.
There is a lot of lower level advertising that is very straightforward and honest.
Which is kinda my point, you can't call ads not brainwashing because the term really does mean a lot of different things.
I like it because imo. advertisers are in general 'the enemy', out to convince us that we'll never find love without a diamond ring and that oreos sound really really good right now. So I'll use this term. Or more often propaganda since that ones harder to argue against
From Merriam Webster's definition of brainwashing [0]
1. a forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up basic political, social, or religious beliefs and attitudes and to accept contrasting regimented ideas
2. persuasion by propaganda or salesmanship
advertising is non-consensual, almost everyone would rather not see ads and not internalize its ideas
advertising is precise and scientific, it is done by powerful groups at large scale
and truthfully, if this comment was part of an astroturfing campaign by an agency if have no problem calling it a brainwashing attempt. or call it something else, its all semantics. murder if you're mad, loss of life if you're not sort of thing
Advertising, by product producers, on media platforms serves a purpose of informing the customers of what is available for purchase.
At times I will watch over the air TV, or other FAST streaming services, just to keep aware of what is new in the marketplaces
"a method for systematically changing attitudes or altering beliefs," fits very well. "originated in totalitarian countries" not so much, and "especially through the use of torture, drugs, or psychological-stress techniques" very little, although it's an "especially", so not a required feature.
The "originated in totalitarian countries" is a bit odd requirement for my taste. Of course, if one wants to use that definition, then by definition even "a method for systematically changing attitudes or altering beliefs the use of torture, drugs, or psychological-stress techniques" is not brainwashing if it doesn't originate from a country that is defined as totalitarian with some definition.
But its hard to convince someone ads are brainwashing when to their mind its just completely obviously something else.
In the end its all language games anyways when we hopefully should all be able to agree that it's a problem that 20% of the GDP to be spent trying to control our thoughts
But would you really be OK with some authority deciding how much gets spent on it? Or is the amount not the real issue?
There's an ad in the article itself: it was offering me 25% off a subscription to MIT Technology Review during Earth Week. I didn't ask to see that information. It was trying to get me to do something I wasn't very interested in. Is that advert part of the problem, or is it one you'd arbitrarily allow?
And it is regulated to an extent, but IMHO it should be regulated dramatically more and the existing regulations should be actually enforced. And at least in Finland, where I'm from, it used to be way way way more regulated than it is nowadays. E.g. advertising to children was universally banned. Ads weren't allowed to air around news. Product placement was strictly banned. TV ads could be put out only every 15 minutes or so, and they could last only a minute or two. Before this commercial radio and TV broadcasts were banned altogether for a long time. Etc etc.
The "25% off a subscription to MIT Technology Review during Earth Week" kind of ads were probably banned (and maybe still are in theory). When a product was allowed to be on sale was strictly regulated (had to be sold on the "real" price for vast majority of the time). There's some new EU legislation for restricting "sales" like this, but I don't think they will be effectively enforced (see e.g. GDPR).
Non-deceptive ways of informing people about factual product features and availability in reasonable volume (e.g. 1-5% of average communicated information) is probably fine. Modern ads have very little to do with such. They are a huge engine that dramatically shape how people think and act in general, e.g. making them want or even need products that don't really benefit them and making them labor to get such products. Consumerism is the main ideology of contemporary western cultures and this is mainly due to advertising.
On the whole though you're just saying "some adverts are bad and should be stopped by regulators", which isn't going to attract much disagreement, except in the details. And regulations (beer and bread, for example) are as old as the hills, and so is consuming stuff (is that the same as consumerism?) - I think the problem is recent rapid innovations in legally permissible scamming.
Vast majority of ads try to link some connotations to their product/service/brand. E.g. young attractive women happen to be around a certain beer brand.
But when you buy the beer, it doesn't come with the women included. It didn't of course outright claim that it would, but the women are put in the ad to create such connotation, and it seems to work. Is that a scam? In any case it's misleading and manipulative.
Now, that's just one case. But there are thousands (millions?) such products/services/scams with their own misleading and manipulative connotations. And together these manipulate the whole culture and society. It transcends just the individuals seeing the ads.
Diamonds are a good example of purely ad-constructed social phenomenon. By associating diamonds with true forever love and devotion and appreciation and whatever, they suddenly become "valuable". And the individual doesn't even have to believe any of this, but if they think that others believe it, they can deem that other people think they are worthy of appreciation and whatever if somebody bought them a diamond.
Of course all of this happens very subconsciously, but it works very effectively. This is how a lot of advertising works. By manipulating whole societal beliefs and values. That's even beyond brainwashing.
Consumerism isn't just buying stuff. It's about people e.g. identifying themselves and others based on what (brand) they buy. The actual product doesn't necessarily even matter itself, it's all the connotations that are associated to them societally with ads. Fashion items are a clear example of this, but it happens with all sorts of goods.
Edit: here's an overview of some theories on how ads work, from advertisers: https://adassoc.org.uk/credos/how-does-advertising-work/
Basically look at what cults do, though it doesn’t even need a machiavellian mastermind involved, people can and will accomplish the same largely by their own initiative. This is what happens when you get online communities radicalizing themselves.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
"This one has everything:
AI, ALAMY, America, American, American GIs, American Mind, Annalee Newitz, Atlanta, Birkbeck, Brain, Brainwashed, Brainwashing, Buddhist, California, Canadians, Catholics, Central Intelligence Agency, China, Chinese, Church Committee, CIA, Cold War, Colin Dickey, Communists, Confucian, Cybernetics, Dark Persuasion, David Seed, Dianetics, Dickey, Dimsdale, Donald Cameron, Douglas Fields, Dwight D Eisenhower, Edward Hunter, For Liang, Frank Schwable, Frank Sinatra, Hidden Persuaders, Hikvision, Homeland Security, Hong Kong, Hong Kong University, Hungarian, Intelligence Activities, Iron Curtain, Ivan Pavlov, Joel Dimsdale, Joost Meerloo, Juliette Kayyem, Kathleen Taylor, Korea, Korean War, L. Ron Hubbard, Lavrentiy Beria, Liang Qichao, Liverpool, London, LSD, Marcia Holmes, Maryland, McGill University, Meerloo, Merrill Root, Military, Mindszenty, Mitchell, MK-Ultra, Montreal, Myth, National Portrait Gallery, National Security Council, Nature, Norbert Wiener, NSC, Online, Operation Midnight Climax, Operations Coordinating Board, OSS, Other, Over, Patty Hearst, Pavlov, Policy, POW's, Power, Psychological Warfare, Psychopolitics, Quanta, Red China, Republic, Russians, Ryan Mitchell, San Diego San Francisco, Scientists, Scientology, Secret Societies, Senator Frank Church, Shirley Chong, Sidney Gottlieb, Soviet Union, State, Stories Are Weapons, Strategic Services, Study Governmental Operations, Symbionese Liberation Army, The Dutch, The Manchurian Candidate, The Science, They, Thought Control, Time Magazine, Today, Tom Burrell, UCSD, United States, University, US, US Senate, US Senate Select Committee, Wayne Williams, West, Western, Wikimedia Commons, William Randolph Hearst, World War III, Worried, Xinjiang, You..."
:-) <g> :-)
https://www.google.com/search?q=snl+stefon
Disclaimer: Submitted for comedy purposes only! :-) <g> :-)
Related (how I generated the above word list from the article text):
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/671487/grep-to-extr...
I'm not sure what you are finding so contentious about this article. We have accepted that people under torture will admit to anything for centuries.
The term "Stockholm Syndrome" originates from a police consultant inventing a syndrome to diagnose a woman he had never met, in order to discredit her criticism of the largely incompetent police response to her and several other people being taken hostage by a bank robber.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/stockholm-...
Africa has a very similar problem. Where Anglo-Europeans think that all deviant behavior is caused by mind control (by demons, Jews, Russians, alcohol, marijuana, the Chinese, Cambridge Analytics, etc.), large parts of Africa believe that all illness is the result of curses. When somebody gets sick and dies, they start looking for witches to kill.
“by spending millions of dollars on research into manipulating the human brain. But while the science never exactly panned out, residual beliefs fostered by this bizarre conflict continue to play a role”
In what sense did the science “not pan out”?
What “residual beliefs” could she mean? The text implies that it’s the idea that the human brain cannot be manipulated.
Almost every sentence has that level of inanity and incoherence. Advertising meanwhile is a billion dollar industry built on manipulating brains.
I would think for the 'deep dive' with details and citations, they want you to buy the book. This is just a teaser.
"Annalee Newitz is the author of Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind, coming in June 2024."
Err...: http://jmc.stanford.edu/commentary/progress/venona.html
I get that expecting truly quality research work from Technology Review is an eggs-in-moonshine level fantasy, but it'd be nice to employ literally one editor who has read literally any of MIT's greatest researchers with all the ivy league cash they spend on fancy robots or buildings or whatever else.