
Your Head as a Battleground, Dueling Memes - bjxrn
http://jacquesmattheij.com/your-head-as-a-battleground-dueling-memes
======
DanAndersen
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.

~~~
frogpelt
I wish you would explain how advertising is "inherently immoral".

But before you do, I'll explain why I disagree.

Advertising is selling ideas. You are selling an idea right now. Just because
your idea doesn't make you any money doesn't make it any more inherently moral
or immoral.

The old cliche, time is money, is basically true. People are trying to
maximize their time and more specifically, the value they get from their time.

That's why a cheeseburger commercial works! People like cheeseburgers and they
consider the value of their time to be maximized while eating one (versus not
eating or eating something else).

If there was no food advertising at all, do you really think people would eat
so much differently? I'm sure they would care less about the brand. But are
some cheeseburgers more evil than other cheeseburgers?

Also, do you not think people get better and worse at self-control? The
advertisers are adjusting their "attacks" (quite a harsh word) because the
same marketing doesn't work forever. People adjust their defenses. They
develop new weaknesses and strengths.

When I was young and broke, advertising NEVER worked on me. Now it works on me
all the time because I have money to spend. I hear McDonald's commercials all
the time but I hate their food (except the fries), so I don't go there.

The companies who produce advertisements and the share holders who pressure
those companies are made up of regular people. Those people are trying to
maximize the value of their time just like you are. Their advertising messages
serve to do just that.

That's not "inherently immoral" in my view.

~~~
daviross
_Just because your idea doesn 't make you any money doesn't make it any more
inherently moral or immoral._ It puts things at a moral deficit, at least. (In
other words, it's not necessarily immoral, but it does mean there's ground to
make up)

 _People are trying to maximize their time and more specifically, the value
they get from their time._ You're treating this as not having moral
weight/impact. This isn't a neutral statement to encourage.

 _But are some cheeseburgers more evil than other cheeseburgers?_ Yes.

 _The advertisers are adjusting their "attacks" (quite a harsh word) because
the same marketing doesn't work forever. People adjust their defenses. They
develop new weaknesses and strengths._ This behavior is most notably seen
elsewhere in biology. It's not as positive of a comparison as I think you
intend to make.

 _The companies who produce advertisements and the share holders who pressure
those companies are made up of regular people._ System effects are pretty
uncontroversially a thing. What one person does in isolation can be very
different in impact from an aggregate of people able to bring vast resources
to bear is able to do. One person with a gun and a goal is a robbery. One
nation with guns and a goal is an invasion.

Advertising would have a better claim at moral neutrality if it were
explicitly opt-in. Not _You 're on this site, so you implicitly give
permission to be bombarded with ads_, but "Would you like to see an ad about
X? Here you go, a one-time ad about X."

The concept of privacy extending to bodily autonomy isn't super-controversial.
There shouldn't be an exclusion of the mind from the body either. Minimizing
external 'mental subroutines' is a virtuous goal.

~~~
Bartweiss
Your opt-in point is a powerful one, because it's not actually countered by
the intuitive "but no one would do that".

Amazon's "Recommended for you" page is pretty good, and it's shown me some
products I'm glad to own. If we imagine that model on steroids - a carefully
cultivated webpage of products I want - I would check it regularly. Just a
list of products with text and (optional) video explaining their features and
why they're valuable to me.

If buying product X for Y dollars will improve my life, tell me and I'll do it
consciously. The evil of advertising, then, is that every appeal to emotion,
urgency, or social pressure is an implication that buying product X
<i>isn't</i> going to improve my life, or at least that I should be prevented
from deciding that rationally.

Modern advertising is a horrible combination of poor targeting and a race to
the bottom.

------
saulrh
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
_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
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.

------
shoo
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
_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)

------
elisee
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.

~~~
lentil_soup
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
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)

------
brongondwana
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
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

------
wanderingstan
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_an...](http://wanderingstan.com/2006-10-11/attention_is_meme_sex_and_google_is_a_dating_service)

>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.

------
danieldk
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.

~~~
bad_user
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.

~~~
jacquesm
> 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.

That's because branding contains all kinds of self-identification hooks.

------
kriro
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
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
How did you get your whole site running in just 3 requests?

~~~
tinco
It's really just one request if I'm not mistaken. The two data requests are
actually references to images embedded in the HTML.

A bit of an aggrevating question but if you look at the site, why should it be
more than 1 request? It's just styled text without any obvious images.

~~~
jacquesm
> It's really just one request if I'm not mistaken.

You're correct.

> The two data requests are actually references to images embedded in the
> HTML.

Yep.

> A bit of an aggrevating question but if you look at the site, why should it
> be more than 1 request?

100% agree with that. The problem is that most pages that are just 'text
without any obvious images' clock in tens of requests and easily a megabyte+.

Before I finally found the time to switch blogging platforms this one was no
different and it aggravated me no end that something that simple should
require 600K of data and 18 requests. The new one (which was quite a bit of
work to put together, it took more work to send less data) is _much_ better in
that sense.

------
TACIXAT
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.

------
kittenfluff
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
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
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).

------
kitzune
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.

------
reilly3000
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.

------
branchless
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.

------
mirimir
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
>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
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
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.

------
rm_-rf_slash
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
> 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
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.

~~~
jacquesm
> I've not read 'The Space Merchants' but I wonder how it assaults that
> sentence as I believe it is generally true.

I'm definitely not saying that it is not true, I'm saying that it _should not
be true_ and that 'The Space Merchants' is an excellent book around the theme
of why that should not be true and how the machinery behind the curtain works.

We're not exactly unable to influence how we think and act (within limits).
Corporate brands are a fairly recent invention, there is no need to give them
the amount of head-space that they are taking up.

------
systemtrigger
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
> 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
Excellent. Thank you.

------
fmdud
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.

------
bikamonki
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'.

~~~
mirimir
Unix meme aside, that's what I do.

Awareness of manipulation reduces its effectiveness.

Bringing in another meme, "I see the fnords!" ;)

Hofstadter's stuff has also been instructive.

~~~
logfromblammo
But once you see the fnords, you can't un-see them.

The paid content masquerading as journalism is particularly irritating. You
can also see similar bias in the regular news stories. There are lots of
tricks you can use to color the facts of a story to get the audience to
respond in a particular way.

Lighting, framing, background, ambient sounds, subject placement--all these
things can be employed for rhetorical effect. For instance, authority figures
might be filmed at a slight upward angle from below the eye line, to make them
appear slightly taller than anyone viewing the image. Fat people will be
filmed from shoulders up if favored, from the waist up if unfavored, and from
the neck down for vaguely defamatory stories. Pay attention to whose faces are
shown with police mugshots, and whose faces are shown with license photos,
military photos, school photos, or photos intended for other purposes. Watch
out for different wording in captions and infobars. Listen for odd euphemisms
that suddenly pop up in several places at once, or for different people who
mysteriously say almost exactly the same things, as though they read from the
same script.

It's almost harder to see anything that _isn 't_ a fnord.

~~~
mirimir
I beg to differ.

It's the tricks that you describe that are the "fnords". And once you see them
explicitly as tricks, they lose their power over you.

~~~
logfromblammo
They lose their power, but they never stop being annoying.

They constantly remind you that other people see you as an object to be
manipulated, rather than as a person with its own individual motivations,
thoughts, and opinions. And then you can also look at other people around you,
and see that the same tricks still have power over them.

~~~
mirimir
I find them amusing, like the tricks that children play to manipulate, rather
than annoying :)

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applecore
_> I've decided to "opt-out" of this war entirely._

Good luck with that, but advertising knows you better than you know yourself.

~~~
jacquesm
For that it has to reach me first. Controlling the vectors for delivery is a
first step in controlling an outbreak of some disease.

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

