Live data from Hacker News

The rise of pity marketing

newstatesman.com

21–30 of 78 posts

Re: The rise of pity marketing

#21

Are we sure all the examples cited were manufactured? Isn’t it possible that in a lot of the examples, someone had a bad day and other people responded with kindness?

Where does the article say they were faked?

> While it may be true that Grier only had one audience member at her initial preview, people soon realised that she had posted a nearly identical tweet at the start of the Fringe in 2022. Pity moved tickets both times.

It seems the article is talking about "pity marketing" as a whole, even if true.

Re: The rise of pity marketing

#22

Are we sure all the examples cited were manufactured? Isn’t it possible that in a lot of the examples, someone had a bad day and other people responded with kindness?

why would you lament your failure or your mishappenings by broadcasting to the world?

Hard to tell, guess it'd be great if we had an example of such a thing so we can check it by comparison. Maybe we can find such an example on twitter...

But maybe it's worth challenging the question a little; what exactly is wrong with doing such a thing? What are the potential positives and negatives if one were to be more open with their failures? Are there any situations where a failure still yields positive results and an analysis of such a failure is useful?

The article itself is not very good and I think the article's author tries to hard to take an alleged social media story where an emotional outburst resulted in a performer getting better sales. Already the article is extremely light on details for this story, and the story itself doesn't seem as important as the author's segue into their point about "sob stories"; I read this as a trite example to vault to a larger point that I don't think the author ever makes, but their opening sentence is quite revealing:

> "There are few behaviours considered more unflattering than actively seeking pity."

This premise is too much for me to accept without further elaboration from the author, as it introduces a lot of questions on this view point that I don't think the article even tries to answer. The focus on how failure should be something we don't show is very unusual, since there are so many fields where failures are part of the expected process, and you're supposed to learn and discuss failures, not hide from them.

I can't really get what the article is meaning to express except a general rant about "sob stories", but the rest of the text just seems to go on regarding something about social media, and while I'm not quite sure what I'm supposed to understand from it, what I did understand was the author maybe just doesn't like the format of discussion on social media and common habits on social media.

That is fine, I am not big on the social media format as well, and I just choose not to use it a ton as a result. So there is something about 'sob stories' and social media we're supposed to understand, but I'm not really sure what it is. Tying it to an artist that "used their sob story to fill seats" and implying that this was a scam with extremely light details is not convincing to me.

Re: The rise of pity marketing

#23
It's an interesting phenomenon, but I feel that the article begs us to pass judgement on this behavior, and that makes the article less interesting to me.

The West and much of the rest of the world have built societies with few strong kinship bonds. Not everyone has a family they can lean on for support, and we tend to lose friends as we get older rather than make new ones. So, yes, of course people will resort to eliciting support from the internet, and when it works even once people will start to learn and game the dynamics. Framing it in these terms may make it sound malicious and disingenuous, but it needn't be either. Given functional kinship bonds, humans are generally good at eliciting support from the people around them and learning what needs to be done to get the support we need. This is just a generalization to strangers.

This isn't to say that there aren't disingenuous people lying to game these mechanics, of course there are. But for the sake of those that aren't, maybe let's leave them be and not raze to the ground what's emerged as a stand-in for actual social support and strong kinship ties?

Re: The rise of pity marketing

#25
Interesting read, but misses the pity-marketing I see most often on Facebook - dropshippers.

“Local homegrown company going bust! Thanks to all our loyal customers. We are selling the last of our stock at 50% off!”

There then follows a link to a shopify shop selling stuff from aliexpress, marked as “50% off while stocks last!” but in actuality marked up 300% or more.

I find it massively scummy, and clearly it works because there’s no end of replies to most of them saying stuff like “so sorry to hear that. Can you ship to…?”

Meta really does profit off the lowest, most deceptive crap.

Re: The rise of pity marketing

#26
post #7

This reminds me of those cases where creators have faked illnesses to market their work and get attention through sympathy, which usually goes horribly wrong. For instance, folks like Belle Gibson here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-32420070 Or the folks documented here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/03... Or the example that reminded me of this, when a Super Mario World modde…

A famous contestant from a Korea reality show faked cancer to solicit donation. He later got caught and was basically banished. He ended up taking his life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choi_Sung-bong

Re: The rise of pity marketing

#27

Are we sure all the examples cited were manufactured? Isn’t it possible that in a lot of the examples, someone had a bad day and other people responded with kindness?

why would you lament your failure or your mishappenings by broadcasting to the world?

[dead]

Re: The rise of pity marketing

#28
post #4

> This manufactured pity instead blindly inflates the value of the work in question – as if to say: if the story is sad enough, the art is automatically good. This poor fool still believes that social media has a shred of authenticity left. There is no such authenticity on social media platforms, the entire system is designed to generate content that creates engagement. I think it says more about our society that peo…

When it comes from corporations, I'm with you: nothing is genuine, everything is carefully manufactured to elicit an emotion (to buy and consume). But from individuals? Sure, there's astroturfing, but there's also genuine messages with no ulterior motives. Or do you think everyone posting here on HN has ulterior motives?

Depends on who you're talking about in organic context.

For instance, if you're talking about the Instagram Explore page or the Tiktok For you page, its all marketing. Literally nothing is real, everything is made to maximize engagement.

If you're talking about your followers who you know in person, that will be 80% authentic at least.

Re: The rise of pity marketing

#29

Are we sure all the examples cited were manufactured? Isn’t it possible that in a lot of the examples, someone had a bad day and other people responded with kindness?

why would you lament your failure or your mishappenings by broadcasting to the world?

Fishing for compliments/reassurance. It's not like these marketing strategies rose from nowhere, they are learned from real behavior.

Re: The rise of pity marketing

#30
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty much why I don't watch AGT or anything of it's ilk. I really wish this trend would end already...

Also shark tank. i joke with my brother: "here comes the pitch, product, gross sales, and btw i have cancer, my mom has cancer." It's a cold joke. My mom had cancer. It's not the having of cancer i'm annoyed of obviously. How in the hell is this relevant to... oh right. it's a fucking national televised show. It's competing with The Bachelorette. sigh. curmudgeons unite. i enjoyed your comment. feel seen!

Yes! I forgot about that one, one of the worst offenders.

"Here is my new idea. It's a diaper for parakeets."

"Why would anyone want that?"

(crying) "Because, because, sorry guys. My mom passed this year and I promised myself I wouldn't cry. She just loved parakeets"

"OK, here is a million dollars"

The whole schtick is so ridiculous I find it pretty offensive.

Post reply on HN