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.
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
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
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