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A brief, weird history of brainwashing

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Re: A brief, weird history of brainwashing

#41

Post by thiagoharry »

Fauntleroy wrote: post #24
spencerflem wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the entire point, right? Pay money to an ad agency and they will affect the thoughts of your target demographic. Maybe its benign brainwashing, or you'd choose a different word because brainwashing has a lot of connotations. But that is factually what it's trying to do

This loosens the definition of the word "brainwashing" so much that the term becomes meaningless.

The term IS meaningless, there is no clear distinction between "brainwashing", "education", "marketing", "propaganda" and "convincing". Except that the first term was coined as war propaganda, so that you could say that people was brainwashed by your enemy instead of admitting that your enemy convinced those people. This also helps you to brainwa... I mean, to convince your citizens that your enemy is very evil and those people brainwashed by them could also be seen as bewitched drones, not fully human beings.

Re: A brief, weird history of brainwashing

#42

Post by nonameiguess »

spencerflem wrote: post #17
smugglerFlynn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be clear, what you claim is actually two things: - advertising is ~1/5th of US economy (backed with facts) - all advertising is brainwashing (your personal opinion)

That's the entire point, right? Pay money to an ad agency and they will affect the thoughts of your target demographic. Maybe its benign brainwashing, or you'd choose a different word because brainwashing has a lot of connotations. But that is factually what it's trying to do

Affecting the thoughts of other humans is close to the purpose of all inter-human communication. Consider the following cases:

- Your neighbor knows you need a new table and their brother sells tables so they tell you about it and offer you a special deal.

- Your daughter is an avowed pacifist who tries very hard to convince you that you should move your family to another country and stop paying taxes to one that is currently waging a war.

- Your son really hates broccoli and pleads with you to make carrots for dinner side instead.

- A company that makes packaged dessert foods pays theaters to covertly insert subliminal imagery into film reels designed to make viewers crave their food.

- A group takes over a rural commune and recruits people from broken homes, convincing them to become sex slaves and take part in ritual suicide pacts over the course of many years of sophisticated psychological manipulation and isolation techniques.

- A charistmatic totalitarian politician spends years on the stump gradually convinging a voting majority of what used to be a liberal democracy that directing all national production toward warfare, attempting to conquer their entire continent, and exterminating an entire race of nationless people is the only way forward for human progress.

Are all of these activities morally equivalent? Does it make sense to call all of them by the same term? Or does that decrease, rather than increase, the usefulness with which we can discuss these kinds of things?

That said, I can't disagree that 20% of a national economy being devoted to marketing and advertising seems unlikely to be a socially optimal allocation of economic activity.

Re: A brief, weird history of brainwashing

#43

Post by jklinger410 »

explaininjs wrote: post #27
Fauntleroy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This loosens the definition of the word "brainwashing" so much that the term becomes meaningless.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/brainwashing : brainwashing - noun 1. a forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up basic political, social, or religious beliefs and attitudes and to accept contrasting regimented ideas 2. persuasion by propaganda or salesmanship

The colloquial definition is 1, not as much 2, which is where the semantic bickering will come in.

Most people do not view being "convinced" as brainwashing. They see brainwashing as a sub-conscious activity. They view being convinced as a conscious one.

I think this definition is too broad myself.

Re: A brief, weird history of brainwashing

#44

Post by unclebucknasty »

thiagoharry wrote: post #41
Fauntleroy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This loosens the definition of the word "brainwashing" so much that the term becomes meaningless.

The term IS meaningless, there is no clear distinction between "brainwashing", "education", "marketing", "propaganda" and "convincing". Except that the first term was coined as war propaganda, so that you could say that people was brainwashed by your enemy instead of admitting that your enemy convinced those people. This also helps you to brainwa... I mean, to convince your citizens that your enemy is very evil and t…

>The term IS meaningless, there is no clear distinction between "brainwashing, "education", "marketing", "propaganda" and "convincing"

From Merriam Webster's definition of brainwashing [0]

  1. a forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up basic political, social, or religious beliefs and attitudes and to accept contrasting regimented ideas

  2. persuasion by propaganda or salesmanship
So, the term isn't meaningless and, colloquially, is generally understood to emphasize the forcible or misleading / propaganda-based aspects of the formal definition.

[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/brainwashing

Re: A brief, weird history of brainwashing

#45

Post by spencerflem »

nonameiguess wrote: post #42
spencerflem wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the entire point, right? Pay money to an ad agency and they will affect the thoughts of your target demographic. Maybe its benign brainwashing, or you'd choose a different word because brainwashing has a lot of connotations. But that is factually what it's trying to do

Affecting the thoughts of other humans is close to the purpose of all inter-human communication. Consider the following cases: - Your neighbor knows you need a new table and their brother sells tables so they tell you about it and offer you a special deal. - Your daughter is an avowed pacifist who tries very hard to convince you that you should move your family to another country and stop paying taxes to one that is…

yeah, fair. I posted in a sibling comment two more reasons imo. advertising fits with brainwashing, namely that it:

Is done scientifically and at huge scale by powerful entities

& is non-consentual, almost everyone would rather not see ads or internalize their ideas. (Coors beer is cool and if you drink it women will like you more, yuck, who wants to believe that)

But yeah, you're right that just influencing thoughts is not the only part of the definition. And really past a certain point anything is impossible to define, so these arguments are always a little weird. Eg. I challenge you to give an airtight definition of what is a chair.

Calling advertizment brainwashing is certainly a little provocative, & in my opinion perfectly correct given the scale and goals. But I can see how it can be annoying in retrospect. Glad we agree that spending that much on it is sad

Re: A brief, weird history of brainwashing

#46

Post by spencerflem »

thiagoharry wrote: post #41
Fauntleroy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This loosens the definition of the word "brainwashing" so much that the term becomes meaningless.

The term IS meaningless, there is no clear distinction between "brainwashing", "education", "marketing", "propaganda" and "convincing". Except that the first term was coined as war propaganda, so that you could say that people was brainwashed by your enemy instead of admitting that your enemy convinced those people. This also helps you to brainwa... I mean, to convince your citizens that your enemy is very evil and t…

I agree tbh,

Which is kinda my point, you can't call ads not brainwashing because the term really does mean a lot of different things.

I like it because imo. advertisers are in general 'the enemy', out to convince us that we'll never find love without a diamond ring and that oreos sound really really good right now. So I'll use this term. Or more often propaganda since that ones harder to argue against

Re: A brief, weird history of brainwashing

#47

Post by jampekka »

card_zero wrote: post #40
spencerflem wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, I think in retrospect maybe part of the confusion is that some people's definition of brainwashing is only the torture/drugs definition, while mine and yours presumably has always included propaganda and other purely psychological means. But its hard to convince someone ads are brainwashing when to their mind its just completely obviously something else. In the end its all language games anyways when we hopeful…

Would you be OK with 1% of GDP? But would you really be OK with some authority deciding how much gets spent on it? Or is the amount not the real issue? There's an ad in the article itself: it was offering me 25% off a subscription to MIT Technology Review during Earth Week. I didn't ask to see that information. It was trying to get me to do something I wasn't very interested in. Is that advert part of the problem, or…

I'm very OK that some authority (democratically accountable) decides what the advertisements can contain, and how prevalent they are allowed to be. I.e. that advertising is regulated.

And it is regulated to an extent, but IMHO it should be regulated dramatically more and the existing regulations should be actually enforced. And at least in Finland, where I'm from, it used to be way way way more regulated than it is nowadays. E.g. advertising to children was universally banned. Ads weren't allowed to air around news. Product placement was strictly banned. TV ads could be put out only every 15 minutes or so, and they could last only a minute or two. Before this commercial radio and TV broadcasts were banned altogether for a long time. Etc etc.

The "25% off a subscription to MIT Technology Review during Earth Week" kind of ads were probably banned (and maybe still are in theory). When a product was allowed to be on sale was strictly regulated (had to be sold on the "real" price for vast majority of the time). There's some new EU legislation for restricting "sales" like this, but I don't think they will be effectively enforced (see e.g. GDPR).

Non-deceptive ways of informing people about factual product features and availability in reasonable volume (e.g. 1-5% of average communicated information) is probably fine. Modern ads have very little to do with such. They are a huge engine that dramatically shape how people think and act in general, e.g. making them want or even need products that don't really benefit them and making them labor to get such products. Consumerism is the main ideology of contemporary western cultures and this is mainly due to advertising.

Re: A brief, weird history of brainwashing

#49

Post by jampekka »

jklinger410 wrote: post #43
explaininjs wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/brainwashing : brainwashing - noun 1. a forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up basic political, social, or religious beliefs and attitudes and to accept contrasting regimented ideas 2. persuasion by propaganda or salesmanship

The colloquial definition is 1, not as much 2, which is where the semantic bickering will come in. Most people do not view being "convinced" as brainwashing. They see brainwashing as a sub-conscious activity. They view being convinced as a conscious one. I think this definition is too broad myself.

Modern advertising is very sub-conscious activity.

Re: A brief, weird history of brainwashing

#50

Post by jklinger410 »

jampekka wrote: post #49
jklinger410 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The colloquial definition is 1, not as much 2, which is where the semantic bickering will come in. Most people do not view being "convinced" as brainwashing. They see brainwashing as a sub-conscious activity. They view being convinced as a conscious one. I think this definition is too broad myself.

Modern advertising is very sub-conscious activity.

When you talk about "modern advertising" I think you are referring to the large campaigns run by huge companies.

There is a lot of lower level advertising that is very straightforward and honest.

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