Advertising Needs To Be Outlawed
It Is Breaking Our Brains
I have been pondering the idea of advertising for some time now. As a fairly new content creator, advertising seems necessary if I want to build my brand and therefore my income. I started off down this track with social media. It didn’t end well for me.
Why is that?
Advertising Relies a Lot on Manipulating Human Emotions.
One really powerful example is that of FUD. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Want to see it in action? Look no further than the US presidential election. Politics in general likes to rely on this. Companies will also resort to this at times. Why do they do it?
Money.
It always comes down to money. Advertising is a mechanism for making money at a faster rate. This made sense before the internet. Now though, advertising isn’t really needed. If you make something good enough, the internet will lead people to it. You just need to connect with people on an individual basis and show them the value you offer. They, in turn, will share that with others they know.
Advertising Does Work.
If your goal is to make money, then it totally makes sense. I have written a bunch on the topic of money, though, and why I think it isn’t what we think it is.
I propose that we stop worrying so much about making money in the short-term and start understanding the longer-term consequences of our actions. One company advertising doesn’t make a huge impact on people’s lives. Millions of companies advertising, on the other hand, has a huge impact.
Think about how many things are pulling on your emotions on a daily basis. Every single ad that tries to manipulate you into performing some action. Think about how prevalent these ads are in your life. It is a constant psychic barrage against you.
The problem is that computers are really good at determining the most effective advertising. They can specifically tailor ads to an individual person that makes them the most likely to click. With advertising now, we are quite literally programming computers to program us. And they are. All the time.
This is Simply Not a Healthy Way to Live.
I propose that we stop advertising until we set clear guidelines on exactly how we advertise. Advertising and “fake news” are the same exact thing. They are presenting a specific view of the information that is intended to invoke some emotional response. This emotional response is intended to make the advertiser money.
I can speak to this on a personal level. I started writing back in August for a couple reasons, but one of them was to make money. A month in, I wrote an article that was essentially propaganda. It made me money. I wrote it with the intention of manipulating the emotions of the readers I was targeting. And I was targeting a very specific audience. I used Twitter to get in front of them and drop my article there.
Don’t do that.
I was subjected to an incredible amount of hate. I can’t say I didn’t deserve it. That wasn’t who I wanted to be. I started writing with the intention of helping people. A month later, I lost myself in the process of trying to make money.
Here are some links if you wanted to read about how I crafted it or why I shouldn’t have done so.
As such, I have forced myself off of social media for the most part. I do make minimal forays onto Twitter from my company account that is limited in scope and used with the intention of directly connecting with individuals through the platform.
I refuse to advertise because I saw what it did to both me and those I targeted with my “advertising”. Now, I stay focused on my goal of making the world a better place. The money is coming. I am getting more views on each post as I slowly get better with my writing. It is slow, but that is OK. Actually, it is somewhat excruciating at times, especially seeing how effective social media can be at spreading emotions and ideas.
I know my example is extreme, but it shows how powerful emotional manipulation can be. When we realize that advertising does the same thing, but on a much more subtle and long-term scale, we can start to understand the effects that we are having on people as we force our way into their heads in order to make them think the way we want.
When we advertise, we are seeking to make money, not help humanity. We need to focus more on helping humanity and understanding that money will come as a result of that.
That is Now my Mission.
I want to help people understand that we don’t need to advertise to make money. At least, not the way we are currently doing by playing on emotions. Until we have regulations in place, we should stop all advertising. I know that sounds extreme but I also think it is necessary.
This is an interesting stance for me to find myself in. I am actually in favor of reducing a lot of regulations that restrict the economy and my economic model shows why that should be the case. In this instance, though, I think we need to understand exactly how much damage we are doing to everyone’s psyches and stop.