We know already that, today, advertisements can “follow” us across the internet. Fourteen years ago, when I was a freshman in college, I remember the first time I noticed rather obscene targeted advertising: An invitation to “Sell (my) Eggs” if I was of majority Chinese descent.
But what flies under the radar? In college too I read the book Overthrow by Stephen Kinzer, which may give someone naïve some pride about knowing “The Truth,” but the truth is this is a record of failed regime change, not what worked.
We are already a little tuned in to the reality that there are advertisements that fly under the radar of our conscious perception and from there influence our decision making. Perhaps a hopeful anecdote is that those who use hypnosis for therapeutics assert that you can only be hypnotized into what agrees with your deep subconscious desires - although I don’t think stage hypnotists agree.
Increasingly, the “public private” internet platforms like Instagram, Pinterest and Tik Tok particularly physically-visually influence the choices of viewers. I have some optimism about this, as my Instagram/Pinterest feeds are tapped into a particular brand of DIY eclecticism, which reflects some of my optimisms about the relationship of high fashion to the internet1, which is another topic I hope to share some thoughts on at some point.
Lately, however, my mind increasingly2 considers the “doomsday” scenarios of what’s going on: is there already a propensity for the government to target advertising which grooms young people’s choices and limits their self-beliefs? Would then that propensity exist across the population’s age range?: Likely. But today I think about a reinforced propensity of the U.S. Government to deploy targeted advertising to young men (read: minors) to enlist. And if the government is not protecting individual privacy, is it appropriate to target advertising regulation?3
"By using available federal databases, the [Selective Service] agency will be able to register all of the individuals required and thus help ensure that any future military draft is fair and equitable," Houlahan said during debate last month, according to Defense News.
"This will also allow us to rededicate resources — basically that means money — towards reading readiness and towards mobilization … rather than towards education and advertising campaigns driven to register people."
What do these words mean? I am reminded of George Orwell’s quote, “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
Instead of educating young people about what it means to serve, we’re just going to monitor whether or not they’re appropriate and use targeted advertising so they enlist. Okay.
Footnotes
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The layman search term for looking into this is “maximalism,” although I prefer to think of it as “Internet Maximalism” as it denotes a much more specific, time-bound expression. What I think is most beautiful and remarkable about this movement in fashion is that it is fashion’s embrace of the ubiquity of the Internet and the information available and the celebration of the ubiquity of possibility and choice. I think too there is an occasional rejection of social class and the trend of “quiet luxury”…There is a large visual discussion between Internet Maximalism vs. Minimalism in fashion and design and how it reflects beliefs and values, but IMO fashion is more of a personal-public dialogue than interior (home) decorating. ↩
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Two books I am reading: Shoshana Zuboff's The Age of Surveillance Capitalism and Means of Control by Byron Tau. ↩
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I’ve mused on advertising regulations before. I understand it’s not a popular perspective for this community, but boy, maybe we could think about advertising regulations for people under the age of consent. ↩