Originally posted by MemoryShock
I guarantee that you will find many examples of people who are getting paid to 'remotely' influence our thoughts and our behaviour.

True...anyone in advertising is getting paid to influence, or at least make the 'client' think that the advertising is able to influence your ( the buying public's ) behavior.....

...for instance, red the most used color in road side signage.

I believe this is because most people think red attracts the most attention.....the color used in any given roadside sign is very often the decision of the 'client'....the owner of the business being advertised.
(They tend to exert their will, since they are paying for the sign they get what they ask for.....even if it is over the recommendations of the advertising employee that might understand a bit about the psychology involved)

Personally, I always pushed yellow.....( there are studies that show yellow is more attention getting, and many large metropolitan areas have gone to yellow for their fire trucks for this reason.)

I do not think that the majority of advertising employees realize what exactly they are doing, but at the same time, I don't think that all of them are ignorant to what they are doing.

The majority of advertising employees fall into categories other than 'mind control' experts......a salesman sells the 'space' very much like any other salesman sells what ever he's been hired to sell.....think of the guy who sold you your new car.....
The 'techs' that make the actual ad possible are just people that might be employed today in advertising and tomorrow in some other form of commerce that require that same set of skills...( printer, ink mixer, carpenter, painter, artist, electrician, camera operator, secretary....the list goes on.)

In my small experience, very few have a hand in at the stage of creation where 'thought control' of the buying public would be attempted.....large ad companies may have some 'spin doctors' on staff....maybe even psychologist or other behavioral experts...( or just a clever copywriter?).

And still those people probably turn up on the roster of the 'Big Client', as much as that of the 'Big Ad Company'....I'm betting Budweiser has their own 'thought control' department that tells the advertising company what to say....not so much the other way round.

I am not certain the vetting process to becoming an advertising employee/exec, but I sincerely doubt that there is any 'subversion' in the process.

All they wanted to know was, could I draw.....whatever the client wanted.

Originally posted by Shar_Chi
Deeper and deeper we go, down the rabbit hole

Not to belittle the rabbit hole, but we don't need to go down there. The view on the surface is quite clear: most advertisement, especially mass-market advertisement, is lies and predatory exploitation.

Not completely -- there is of course, always an underlaying layer, however thin, of actual objective information. It is usually completely buried, however -- slathered with the unwholesome frosting of emotional appeal and psychological manipulation. The concupiscent cake of consumerism.

And, more and more, the American public is forgetting what wholesome food tastes like. The results are spilling into all arenas -- politicians now talk in sound-bites, fewer and fewer people read books -- we simply no longer have the necessary attention span. Satisfaction now, and it better not take to long to chew.

The public may be blamed. Human nature may be blamed. But those who make and distribute the poison, and profit from its debilitating effects, cannot simply point to the weakness of others and shrug off responsibility.

Originally posted by Shar_Chi
Hey now you are making my points for me!

Not just your points. I think Ian said it best in his post above me...predatory exploitation.

Let's revisit a paragraph from my original post..

Originally posted by MemoryShock
As well, I would like to discuss our reactions to this imposition of a 'fifteen second' society and what we can do, for ourselves, to remind ourselves to focus on what is important to our respective lives...as opposed to their bottom line.

You are preaching to the choir..

Since you talk of awareness and reaction I´ll use these two important key-words to describe how I try to behave towards the onslaught of stimuli. This has been very helpful to me and also saved me a lot of time, money and suffering.

Knee-jerk-reaction. When I see myself or others quickly react to some outside stimuli, offer, artificial importance, sales pitch, ad, coercion, command, I immediatly cease all reaction, action, response and retreat to sti quietly, observe, evaluate or even ignore. "We just HAVE TO go to that event tonight!" a friend will tell me. If he does it in a frenzied, whipped-up tone of voice I dont respond at first and take a deep breathe. Sometimes I say something to buy time: "Alright, I´ll think about it". I can then retreat and think about it before giving a yes or no answer. A frenzied offering will mostly lead to a big NO from me. NO. Simple as that. NO!. Which can of course be conveyed in a gentle manner: "Sorry, I cant come tonight". Unfortunately most people will indeed not have the willpower to think and decide for themselves but just go along with what someone says they should do.

Especially if they are mentally overwhelmed. The inner exhaustion lets them say: "Hey, just tell me what to think and do, and I´ll do it".

An interesting exercise to experience what type of willpower is needed to resist advertisement-mind-control:

Play a classical piece of music. While doing so, imagine another piece of music such as pop or rock or flamenco or whatever, and dance to THAT, keep imagining THAT. Or put on some pop/rock/hip hop music while hearing classical music in your mind and moving to THAT.

Another simple exercise: Sitting in the cinema, commercials running, place your attention elsewhere than the screen once in awhile. To the curtains, the people sitting in their seats, to your breathing, to the ceiling, wherever. Theoretically its easy not to get hypnotized. Thing is, we WANT to get hypnotized sometimes. We WANT advertisement to take us into another world.

But its a cheap world where shampoo is equated with to romantic adventure and butter is equated with a shiny-white-teeth-harmonious-family-sitting-in-a-quaint-garden.

Originally posted by Skyfloating
A frenzied offering will mostly lead to a big NO from me. NO. Simple as that. NO!. Which can of course be conveyed in a gentle manner: "Sorry, I cant come tonight".

Especially if they are mentally overwhelmed. The inner exhaustion lets them say: "Hey, just tell me what to think and do, and I´ll do it".

It's good that you learnt to play nice, skyfloating.

I'm an awful lot less comprimising when it comes to things like this, to the point of which people start making up crazy things for why i won't come out.

People rarely look to the simplest explanation when they are trying to understand a person's psychology.

Perhaps it's because we've all been brainwashed into believing that there is always only two reasons for why a person would do something;

They do it for themselves, or they do it for other people.

Sadly, that understanding of psychology is flawed.

A person can do something for everyone, and no one, as well.

Often, i revert to the latter just as a matter of being defiant in the face of the materialistic whims of my peers.

Originally posted by MemoryShock
What if ignorance is merely the encouraged concentration of one's attention to physical means and desires as opposed to conscious interaction with various stimulii?

Ahh, no, that would be self-gratification.

Only those who do not have faith in their own existence follow this path.

Ignorance, is similar to self-gratification, except instead of rejecting information in order to experience new sensations/pleasures, they simply reject new information because they are completely self-assured in their own intellectual capabilities.

Really though, Ignorance and Self-Gratification are but two sides to a single coin.