I actually realized recently that this is probably the underlying phenomenon behind "how is my phone listening to my conversations to show me ads/articles?"
The other day I was thinking about LLM aggregation and in my internal dialogue used the example of "aliens built the pyramids" as a fringe theory that would be picked up on if tuning for other associated fringe positions by LLMs at places like Gab.
Later in the day I saw in my news feed an article on "how were the pyramids built?" (One of my interests is Egyptian and LBA Mediterranean archeology, so on topic.)
At first I thought "how the heck did it read my mind?"
But then as I thought about it more I remembered that usually my go to example of a fringe position is flat earth. So why was I suddenly using pyramids as the example in my internal dialogue.
What must have happened was that I initially saw the article headline in my feed in passing and didn't consciously register it, but when I was reaching for a fringe position example had been primed for that, and then only after having consciously been reflecting on the topic actually noticed the article in my feed.
Which IMO is a much more alarming explanation for the phenomenon - that my thinking was being written to a degree by my feed - than that my phone was somehow listening in on things or reading my mind.
It reminds me of a graffiti artist in NYC who used to write graffiti about how in reading it he had effectively graffitied your mind.
This is why your attention is so insanely valuable. Everyone thinks they're immune to advertising, yet people keep paying billions and billions of dollars to show something on your screen for a few seconds... because like it or not, it works.
I've been using ad blockers and not watching TV for so long that I have very little ad resistance. Whenever I use someone else's computer that doesn't an ad blocker, it makes me wonder how people live like this.
I'm so bad at handling distractions that I have to turn the radio or music off to make a left hand turn.
I often wonder how friends back home in Texas can believe the things they do, say the things they say... and then when I visit and we sit around to watch a game and I see how many ads many people are exposed to every day, I start to get it.
There's some version of it anywhere you go, for every social and political leaning. I tend to be somewhere between liberal and leftist, but I used to be a lot more extreme and absolutist in my views, and I can pin it directly to mindlessly taking in memes and messages targeted straight at my biases and preconceptions. Even having "good praxis" is no vaccine: someone somewhere is looking for a way to radicalize or profit from your perspective.
You probably get this, but every so often I meet someone who thinks they're a good person because they live in the right state or follow the right media. And that could be Fox News and Texas as easily as it could be MSNBC and New York.
Words are literally spell(ings), you see, we've trivialized casting spells. In the past being enchanted was a negative semantic relation, now, everyone wants to be enchanted. What type of world is the world where everyone is a magic user casting spells without their awareness of such? Our world.
Without advertising in the world, it'd be a much poorer place. Advertising exists for more than a thousand years and it's the only way for other people to know what you can do for them in exchange for something.
Except the advertising industry of today is akin to mental manipulation. It's less about letting you know what the product can do for you and more about getting you to buy/pay for it.
It's easy to make a strong argument when it's also woefully incomplete. :P
If all advertising were just abstract economic information that a service or product existed with certain features at a certain price-point, then we're left with a whole bunch of inexplicable mysteries, including-but-not-limited-to:
* Why would there be some expensive messages that lack any of that economic information, such as those which show a succession of nice things (that aren't being sold) closing with a brand-name the viewer is already aware of?
* Why would senders deliberately seek to ensure that the same person sees the same repeated message multiple times, even after they declined to purchase the first time and their situation wouldn't have changed?
* Why would any info-packets be crafted to make previously-neutral viewers experience fresh fear and dissatisfaction?
* Why would someone spend unnecessary money on funny mascots or catchy music?
* Why would (where not illegal) the product have a time-limited discount that wasn't actually time limited nor discounted?
You can answer all the questions with the same answer (quoted from my comment above):
> Advertising exists (..) for other people to know what you can do for them in exchange for something.
Your questions are just requiring more sophisticated answers that will all boil down to that. What you say is "unnecessary funny mascots or catchy music" is brand awareness which is still "letting other people know I exist and I can sell them stuff - I hope they look me up later or remember me when they are at the shop". The others are similar. One might have distaste for the manipulation but then your problem is with people, not advertising. A slimey sales guy does as much or more manipulation without needing to buy ads.
I agree that a good salesperson manipulates people too. Instead of trying to compare how much manipulation is done by salespeople vs in ads, I think it's worthwhile to consider how the manipulation is performed.
Both ad and salesperson will probably attempt to make us feel some emotion - best case without our conscious awareness of it. The tools an expensive ad has at its disposal seem to me much more effective in evoking emotion; visual stimuli, carefully crafted music, decades of psychology research, etc.
And while we've had a chance to evolve strategies against human to human manipulation (doors, perhaps, and various subtle triggers of distrust), the ad environment is a very recent development.
I agree investigation is worthwhile. As an adult, being aware of techniques like fake sense of urgency or scarcity, playing on your maslow needs for belonging and self-actualisation etc are things you should be aware, to develop a better sense of "smell" for bullshit.
I don't think any of this is new though, I'm pretty sure the local Roman seller of beads and nice dresses did the same things to their customers on the posters they put on buildings and the cries they shouted in the square, or olive oil salespeople using gladiators to have spectators buy that specific kind of olive oil. You can look these examples up because they are real.
The technology and mediums change, but human emotions and our reactions to them change on a scale of many more years than only a few thousands.
Thats an interesting point about the age of manipulative sales strategies! I didn't consider it.
And I agree with your position that emotions change over a rather long timescale.
In fact that's exactly why I'm concerned about the speed of technological development in psychology and data science. I fear that it's no longer salesperson vs consumer. Now it's salesalgorithm and a large chunk of the behavioral science academic efforts vs consumer. The power that the producer wields is increasing at a much faster rate than the emotional awareness of the consumer.
My perpective is influenced by the Center of Humane Tech's positon. The people behind 'The social dillema' documentary and the 'Your undivided attention' podcast. Manipulative capabilities are increasing FAST. And I believe that this speed of change is unprecedented.
I call what you are describing "informational" advertisement, and indeed it is totally fine. However most modern advertisement is not trying to inform but rather to convince, using a variety of psychological tricks to manipulate viewers into a specific position. This is totally not okay.
I'm sorry but that's bullshit. Advertising is carte blanche mind control.
Markets and products can easily exist without advertising. In fact, they're better. You go to markets, and you have curators. Advertising outside of a market should be not only illegal but culturally frowned upon as a root ethic.
> Markets and products can easily exist without advertising
Source needed - seeing I don't know any company that doesn't advertise in some shape or form. The ones that I found that claim they don't, actually do advertise and use the "we don't advertise" as further advertisements. By definition I think it'd be hard to find companies that truly don't advertise, so maybe you know of some that are successful but don't do it?
I'm not a fan of Tesla but to give credit where it's due, I have never seen an advertisement from them. The closest thing I have seen is branded chargers, which is also a functional display of their brand (you need to know if you can use the charger or not).
There are also tons of small companies that have no advertising. Think one or few man shows that operate on word of mouth, and are not looking to grow.
Sometimes I play Rocket League, where I'm intensely focused on the playing field and not paying attention to anything else. I'll have some random song or phrase in my head the whole match, just there in the background. And then there will be a pause in the action, and I'll for (what I thought was) the first time, look at the names of the other players long enough to actually read them, and there it is: one of them has a name that prompted that song or that thought in my head. I had no idea. I thought I was 100% focused on the action in the game, but those names influenced me anyway.
The other day I was thinking about LLM aggregation and in my internal dialogue used the example of "aliens built the pyramids" as a fringe theory that would be picked up on if tuning for other associated fringe positions by LLMs at places like Gab.
Later in the day I saw in my news feed an article on "how were the pyramids built?" (One of my interests is Egyptian and LBA Mediterranean archeology, so on topic.)
At first I thought "how the heck did it read my mind?"
But then as I thought about it more I remembered that usually my go to example of a fringe position is flat earth. So why was I suddenly using pyramids as the example in my internal dialogue.
What must have happened was that I initially saw the article headline in my feed in passing and didn't consciously register it, but when I was reaching for a fringe position example had been primed for that, and then only after having consciously been reflecting on the topic actually noticed the article in my feed.
Which IMO is a much more alarming explanation for the phenomenon - that my thinking was being written to a degree by my feed - than that my phone was somehow listening in on things or reading my mind.
It reminds me of a graffiti artist in NYC who used to write graffiti about how in reading it he had effectively graffitied your mind.