From: Richard Ridge (richard_ridge@tao-group.com)
Date: Wed Feb 13 2002 - 04:58:45 MST
>I would not say I'm a puritan - in fact, no one ever has till just now!
Fair enough, but phrases like 'money grubbing crassness' and 'the desire to
elevate humanity above this pettiness' wouldn't be out of place in a sermon
(say, for example "but it does boil down to Christ and the desire to elevate
humanity above this pettiness.") See what I mean?
> Just because a business that fabricates need will fail in the long run
> doesn't mean it doesn't harm in the short run. Yes, the dot-coms crashed.
> But didn't they fool a bunch of people into losing a bunch of
> money/jobs/security? Investing their self-worth in worthless stock
> portfolios that tanked?
Indeed, but none of those actually relate to your original contention
concerning engineering demand for a product. This really doesn't apply to
investing, which should always be a significantly more considered process
than buying t-shirts. My point was that most companies rely on appealing to
existing markets and demands, not creating them in the first place. My point
is that if your argument was correct those dot coms should currently all
still be in business and making vast profits on the back of their allegedly
zombified customers.
> Just because
> Cosmo says it's good for you doesn't mean it's good for _you_ . I don't
> care what the gratification is, so long as the motivation comes
> from within.
That does beg the question of what you are doing on a memetics list then -
correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the entire point of memetics that much of
the concepts to which we adhere cannot be depicted as being internally
generated per se (and I would be dishonest if I didn't say that that last
sentence of yours just howls 'meme' to me - it reads like something out of a
new age self help book. Or what I think a new age self help book would be
like, if I actually read one). The theory of memetics is an evolutionary
account of culture, by which concepts can be transmitted through
communication, which can then be instantiated in memory. From this point the
success of a meme is determined by such considerations as fecundity and
longevity - in order to replicate it must adapt into mutational variants
which will then compete with each other in transmission, the most amenable
to reception being the most successful.
That seems to be quite a good description of the memetics of advertising -
in order words, if a meme (advert) is not adapted to its environment (host),
it will fail. In which case, the host is not an entirely passive agent in
the process in the way that all of the descriptions of advertising I've
heard here seem to assume. The fundamental assumption being made is that
people are so easily permeable that they allow themselves to be controlled
by even potentially unsuccessful memes. It seems to me that the psychology
being advocated is of a markedly different order - namely that of operant
conditioning which does assume individuals to be easily malleable (given
that said psychology accords well with the Marxist view of individuals as
being environmentally determined, it doesn't come as any surprise that Bodie
should find it amenable to the concatenation of kneejerks present within his
cranium). In short, the problem I have with the leftist doctrine of
advertising is what happens when you examine its foundations and extrapolate
them - if we are not competent to make decisions on shopping, why should we
be deemed capable of making any other decisions? Like voting, for example?
Incidentally, the other thing is that leftist complaints about advertising
seem to be a mirror image of right wing complaints about media violence,
which also assume us to be puny and pathetic creatures so easily swayed by
TV that we pick up rifles and blast granny away the minute after we watch
any Hollywood film. As the arguments are essentially identical I've always
wondered why I've never come across anyone who accepted both arguments (bit
like right wingers who oppose abortion but support the death penalty) - of
course, I reject both.
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