> It makes my life worse every day as I have to filter through "good self-promoters" to find people who are actually doing interesting things.
Or maybe you are setting up a straw man there as the people you find interesting are simply bad at self-promotion?
At a party once, I met a graduate student in physics and a guy who worked for an advertising firm. The physicist made a self-deprecating joke about how he sees his occupation as not terribly productive (I guess he saw his own potential for making a big discovery as pretty slim), but then remarked with some relief that at least the fact that he can dedicate his life to research is "a sign of a wealthy society." Immediately after that, he went up in arms against the guy in advertising, confronting him with, "but what do you do that's useful?" I had to interject, telling the physicist, that without people willing to buy stuff including all the plastic toys (chemical engineering) and fancy gadgets (electrical and computer engineering), there would be much less currency floating around in the economy and we wouldn't have the wealthy society he spoke of just a minute ago, in which case the big physics projects like the LHC would not get funded (i.e. we would be back to the 18th century or earlier).
The people I find interesting are all over the board at self-promotion! It's barely correlated. That's the point. The self-promotion is completely unhelpful in directing my attention to anything useful, but it is designed specifically to try to fool me.
Nobody needs advertising to be "willing to buy stuff." Advertising shifts demand around from companies that are worse at advertising to companies that are better at it. What do you suppose people would do with their portion of the GDP if there were less advertising? Sit on their hands, because they don't aspire to anything? Would men, their savings accounts bulging with useless money, moan, "I only wish I wanted an iPad more?" Although I admit that it is unavoidable, I find it non-obvious that commercial advertising contributes anything at all to the economy, and supposing it does, I find it completely unbelievable that it is worth the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of labor spent on it.
> Nobody needs advertising to be "willing to buy stuff."
Untrue. First of all, even if advertising "only shifted demand around," it would still be worthwhile because our country participates in a global economy and we export many products abroad (as well as import others, but that's a different question). Second, the statement that advertising "only shifts demand around" is just plain wrong. Advertising creates demand, and this creation is overall a positive thing (admittedly there are plenty of specific negative examples). For one positive example: Americans didn't buy into cars simply because of utility. They bought into cars because of the entire "lifestyle" image created around owning a car -- and this image was created in large part thanks to advertising campaigns. There would be many fewer cars around today, and our economy would be much slower were it not for advertising.
To naysayers below: as Henry Ford's famous expression went, "if I asked my customers what they wanted, they'd tell me they want a faster horse." In other words: people did not immediately buy into the idea that a car is something desirable. At the time, cars were clumsy, noisy, not very comfortable or easy to drive. The whole idea of a car as something to aspire to had to be "pushed" onto the audience, and Ford was not shy about doing it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Model_T#Advertising.2C_mar...).
Americans didn't buy into cars simply because of utility. They bought into cars because of the entire "lifestyle" image created around owning a car -- and this image was created in large part thanks to advertising campaigns.
Nah. Show me a country with a similar low density as America where people don't buy cars almost as soon as they can afford them.
The advertising was certainly prominent, but it didn't drive the fundamentals.
Most Americans don't live in particularly low-density areas. The Los Angeles metro area is about as dense as that of New York; the fact that LA is car-based whereas New York is based on rail is due to infrastructure choices made based on people's desire to drive more instead of walking or taking mass transit.
That desire was in large part created by marketing portraying automobiles as signs of wealth, power, modernity, and of course sexual potency.
The Los Angeles metro area is about as dense as that of New York; the fact that LA is car-based whereas New York is based on rail is due to infrastructure choices
Yes, in the case of New York the infrastructure choices were literally set in stone well over a hundred years ago.
made based on people's desire to drive more instead of walking or taking mass transit.
We all have choices to make in life. You can:
A) Live in a place like Manhattan in a small, expensive apartment, high population density, crime issues, impractical to own anything that doesn't fit in an elevator (including a car), but you can walk around and it has a usable public transportation system. Or..
B) Live in a place where for less money you can have a single-family house, room for multiple cars, a lawn and garden, low crime, and a reasonable commute to work. But no subway system.
Most Americans voted with their feet in the 20th century and chose B. They didn't need convincing.
That desire was in large part created by marketing portraying automobiles as signs of wealth, power, modernity, and of course sexual potency.
That's ridiculous.
There's nothing more potent to a young couple than a house with a few empty bedrooms.
It's not ridiculous at all, it's very veridic. It's a basic advertising technique to link the product to some desirable value or quality. In the automobile's case, independence, which is already, in Western cultures, a trait of males and strongly linked to virility. They don't sell just the product, but the image that comes with owning it, the famous "lifestyle".
Edward Bernays is considered the father of modern PR and propaganda. Not a coincidence, he is the nephew of Sigmund Freud. He was the first to theorize the manipulation through the subconscious. And sex is one of the subconscious' most powerful forces. He participated in the US effort that succeeded in swaying the US public opinion away from isolationism and into the First World War. Not accidentally, this propaganda effort heavily featured virile imagery: young strong men as soldiers (which, incidentally, are the most expendable members of a society). Modern advertising is nothing more than applied propaganda and follows his ideas.
How naive of you to ask... No, how about you try to disprove it?
Unlike math, moth social science studies require years of work. I could of course go to a library or search Google to try to find something that would support my point (hint: most likely I will find something). Would that be proof to you? Regardless of what you think of it, it would still not be good enough for me to consider it as proof. Because it would be equivalent to what's known in the statistics circles as a "fishing expedition": cast a wide enough net and you will find something to support your opinion regardless of what your opinion is.
The best way to produce a true "proof" would be to ignore everything that's been written and perform a sociological experiment. That would require years of work, expertise in conducting similar experiments, and millions in funding. Is that what you are asking me to do?
It is impossible to make any progress in the soft fields without relying on intuition. Learn to accept it. Think of intuition as a little Bayesian engine built into your brain. Often biased, but if honed properly, extremely powerful. You are well warned not to trust everything I say; but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't seek out a better perspective on the world. Only through seeking a different perspective can one avoid being biased.
I'm not being naive here. I fully expected you not to produce any data, and you didn't.
No, how about you try to disprove it?
Because I'm not the one making the extraordinary claim here (that America's personal transportation infrastructure is primarily the result of a systematic psychological manipulation by advertisers).
I could of course go to a library or search Google to try to find something that would support my point (hint: most likely I will find something). Would that be proof to you?
It depends on what you find. Is it based on aggregate economic and census data, or is it simply testing individuals' susceptibility? Was it funded by a government trying to figure out where they needed to build roads, or an advertising industry promoting itself? Do the methods support the conclusions? How much does it support the claim we're discussing?
The best way to produce a true "proof" would be to ignore everything that's been written and perform a sociological experiment. That would require years of work, expertise in conducting similar experiments, and millions in funding. Is that what you are asking me to do?
There have, in fact, been many millions (likely billions) spent funding sociological and urban planning studies over the years.
Can you reference some serious study that even halfway supports the claim? I'll read whatever you come up with with an open mind.
Or are you expecting me to throw out my own experience and intuition and just "learn to accept" yours?
Because my experience says that where people work and live is a major life decision that people plan for and think about very carefully. People buy houses in the suburbs because they prefer not to hear the neighbors through their apartment walls or live in the shadow of the factory or office building where they work. People buy cars because they need to get to work and cars provide convenient, comfortable, and relatively inexpensive personal transportation.
My intuition tells me this explanation is sufficient and we needn't invoke Bayes, Bernays, Freud, or powerful psycho-sexual subconscious forces to explain it further. Heck, my intuition would sooner accept a purely Jungian explanation than this self-important Media Studies concoction.
A person in advertising once related to me that the studies they went by placed sex third in male attention-getting effectiveness. Food came in second after...wait for it...transportation. That's right, advertisers use transportation on its own to sell other products. They hardly needed to use sex to sell farmers a Model T or family cars in the 30's and 40's.
I think that my explanation will be better supported by data than yours. Here's why:
The automobile trend in the US started with the Model T: a utility vehicle if there ever was one. This trend was well underway far before the advertising-industrial complex really kicked into gear post-WWII.
Furthermore, people all over the world begin to prefer cars over walking whenever the economic/logistic factors support it. If the American phenomenon were really primarily the result of a specific set of machinations, you wouldn't expect it to replicate itself quite so consistently.
Money not spent on cars would spent on something else. or saved and lent to someone else who would spend it on something.
And if car purchases having no utility declined, its likely that the other things purchased might have utility, which means more wealth created in the long run. Not a slower economy.
Is this an example of something that helps the economy (since your premise above was that advertising is very important for the economy)? It certainly doesn't help productivity for every family to have a large house to take care of, and most of the spending to outfit and run that house is ultimately a waste.
... even if advertising "only shifted demand around," ...
Given the state of US consumer debt, you can make a convincing case that if this wasn't true 100 or even 20 years ago, it certainly is true now. (Unless you mean the top 5% whose wealth is skyrocketing, of course; they could probably be convinced to spend more of it since they won't have to pay it in taxes any time soon.)
"Miranda Priestly: 'This... stuff'? Oh. Okay. I see. You think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select... I don't know... that lumpy blue sweater, for instance because you're trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don't know is that that sweater is not just blue, it's not turquoise. It's not lapis. It's actually cerulean. And you're also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves Saint Laurent... wasn't it who showed cerulean military jackets? I think we need a jacket here. And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of eight different designers. And then it, uh, filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic Casual Corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you're wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room from a pile of stuff."
It's a beautifully written defense of connoisseurship. I can't help but admire the force of the writing and the depth of knowledge conveyed by Anna Wintour's double. It's the best line of the movie.
But, getting past all that eloquence, and back to the point -- doesn't it seem like too much intelligence wasted on too little substance? I think the person in the lumpy blue sweater can say, I actually do not care about your convoluted story. I put this on because I have to wear something rather than nothing, but its history has no interest for me.
This is not a philistine rejection of all design. Just a certain frivolous part that takes itself too seriously.
> doesn't it seem like too much intelligence wasted on too little substance?
That's an interesting argument. The answer is no, and it's because fashion and other seemingly frivolous pursuits serve a very clear function in the society. Finding a mate, a business partner, a friend, etc. is often very difficult. You generally want to hang out with the best, the smartest, the most influential people possible. However there is no easy way to tell! It would be nice and easy if the best and the smartest were also the best looking, but it is not always the case. Also, there is no "IQ coefficient" badge on the forehead. There is really no way to tell other than either by asking questions (too direct!) or by observing subtle social clues. Fashion sense and social skills are some of those clues.
From the other side of the coin, when you are smart, you want to advertise that. But it would be unsubtle to put up an IQ coefficient badge on your forehead. And being unsubtle (which equates to failure to consider all possible consequences) is seen as a mark of low intelligence. It is the same way in the human society as it is in chess. In chess, if you don't think through as many possible moves as you can, you lose. So you try to look smart, subtle, sophisticated, and up-to-date, at the same time without coming across as too direct or vulgar. It is very hard.
BTW, the unkempt "nerd" look is also an advertisement -- albeit to a limited audience.
It works the same way in humans as it does in lyrebirds. All animal societies share some fundamental similarities.
Which would have failed utterly in the instance that the person being addressed was wearing something that she couldn't twist into being a result of the whims of the fashion industry.
But then of course, they'd just be rebuking bad taste, because it's not really possible that they might, after all, just be genuinely wasting time.
Or maybe you are setting up a straw man there as the people you find interesting are simply bad at self-promotion?
At a party once, I met a graduate student in physics and a guy who worked for an advertising firm. The physicist made a self-deprecating joke about how he sees his occupation as not terribly productive (I guess he saw his own potential for making a big discovery as pretty slim), but then remarked with some relief that at least the fact that he can dedicate his life to research is "a sign of a wealthy society." Immediately after that, he went up in arms against the guy in advertising, confronting him with, "but what do you do that's useful?" I had to interject, telling the physicist, that without people willing to buy stuff including all the plastic toys (chemical engineering) and fancy gadgets (electrical and computer engineering), there would be much less currency floating around in the economy and we wouldn't have the wealthy society he spoke of just a minute ago, in which case the big physics projects like the LHC would not get funded (i.e. we would be back to the 18th century or earlier).