All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.
Noam Chomsky
I was reading a newsletter on freelancing, of which I follow plenty as there's always some useful article in most of them and I like practical stuff even if it's obvious 80% of the time. The one I was reading was on social media, with some good advice here and there, some very obvious tips on most of it, and then there was something I had stumbled a few times before, and which sent me, well, here.
To ramble to my heart's desire <3 .
You see, one of the advices was about steering clear of sharing stuff on subjects that were touchy or controversial, even if you feel passionate about it, to avoid losing a part of your followers.
I have a love/hate relationship with marketing. I can understand it. I can use it. I am appalled and awed by its efficiency and practicality and consider it almost an invincible tool.
That's why I love it, and why I hate it. We are bombarded with it all the time, forced to deal with the mental pressure and mental work of separating the seaaaa of marketed information we receive into "ok, this I do want/need/is important" from "this is bullshit and someone is just trying to get me to buy their stuff/lie/whatever"
And I do understand that being all smiles and neutral on everything that matters is a good way to keep oneself from being disliked by people who might think differently. Please, we see it happening all the time from politicians, public figures and the like. Smile smile be nice, smile more, say you care, care a looooot, say you are sorry and that you worry if something really big and bad happens, post pictures of cute cats after that, smile again and do nothing about anything. And you won't get on anyone's bad sides like that, at all.
This also, in my opinion, makes you a spineless bastard.
If you believe in something, shout it to the skies, and embrace all that makes you feel passion. What is a greatest joy than that? Who the hell are you if you don't say words you believe in? Don't shy from debate, listen to others points of view, don't be afraid to change your mind if you feel you've been proven wrong, don't be afraid to maintain your position if you feel it's worth defending. Use your brain.
And if you do want to become a cookie-cut figure who smiles and lacks any content in order not to piss off anyone while treating everyone as just a number to add to your friends' list (as if that would be part of being "nice"...) because that will increase your "popularity", then by all means go ahead and do so, coward.
(... you would also count as manipulative in that case, but weeeeeeeeell, what's marketing but manipulation?)
All this reminds me to the whole heartless and primordial "appeal to the sense of survival, necessity and sex" one can find on marketing cook-books. Believe me, I do find the beast beautiful, but sometimes it just spouts stuff on how to lose all the blood in your veins, and that's when all the pretty becomes kind of nauseating. >_>
