I agree, I think people who ask "well how do you know the product exists" are missing the point of advertisement, which is not to inform people by factual arguments and discussion, but to convince them through emotional manipulation.
> On average, it's manipulation, brainwashing and commodification of well told lies.
What's even worse, the same emotional manipulation methods that are used in advertising are now applied to the political domain, and they seem to lead to increased misinformation and political spectrum fragmentation. It is especially easy to instill hate or anger into people.
I don't think modern society, where people are expected to be as rational as possible (in order to participate in improving the society), can survive if at the same time, we weaken this rationality by circumventing it through an endless stream of emotional manipulation.
In the 18th and 19th century, it became widely accepted that public education is beneficial for everyone, i.e. it's worth teaching everybody how to read and write, as well as other stuff like civics. It's not obvious at all this is the case, there certainly was lot of resistance to this idea from elitist classes of nobles and clerics.
I think there is a similar conflict coming up in 21st century, where we will have to recognize, to progress as a civilization, all humans should have the right to be as emotionally stable as possible (and learn the psychological tools to that effect), so they could make rational decisions most of the time. But the very existence of advertising and other forms of commercial psychological manipulation threatens this general right, and so they will fight against that very idea.
> On average, it's manipulation, brainwashing and commodification of well told lies.
What's even worse, the same emotional manipulation methods that are used in advertising are now applied to the political domain, and they seem to lead to increased misinformation and political spectrum fragmentation. It is especially easy to instill hate or anger into people.
I don't think modern society, where people are expected to be as rational as possible (in order to participate in improving the society), can survive if at the same time, we weaken this rationality by circumventing it through an endless stream of emotional manipulation.
In the 18th and 19th century, it became widely accepted that public education is beneficial for everyone, i.e. it's worth teaching everybody how to read and write, as well as other stuff like civics. It's not obvious at all this is the case, there certainly was lot of resistance to this idea from elitist classes of nobles and clerics.
I think there is a similar conflict coming up in 21st century, where we will have to recognize, to progress as a civilization, all humans should have the right to be as emotionally stable as possible (and learn the psychological tools to that effect), so they could make rational decisions most of the time. But the very existence of advertising and other forms of commercial psychological manipulation threatens this general right, and so they will fight against that very idea.