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Stop eating Lady Gaga's Oreos

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Re: Stop eating Lady Gaga's Oreos

#41

Post by Telaneo »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #26
gkoberger wrote: post #5

I don't know if I buy this framing. The intro Pearl Jam story is only noteworthy because it's unique. Cobain wasn't one of a million examples of counter-culture; we still talk about him today because it was uniquely his brand (to be incredibly famous while seemingly rejecting the fame). Michael Jackson's hair caught on fire filming a Pepsi commercial in 1984. Bill Cosby famously hawked Jell-O Pudding. Sports stars we…

Michael Jackson, Bill Cosby, and Ronald Regan are all great examples of people who were considered sellouts at the time. It didn't hinder their mainstream commercial success, but there were a large number of people that definitely did not consider them cool. Sellouts have always existed at some level, but now it's different, I don't even think a lot of kids know what "sellout" means.

> I don't even think a lot of kids know what "sellout" means.

I think they still do, but selling out to do a deal with a brand to put your name on some clothes or cookies is so far down the scale it doesn't really register to begin with. At worst, all the harm it does is a potential harm to their future art, but a man's gotta make money somehow. It is capitalism after all.

Selling out when there are moral or ethical problems in the mix, they're still able to get very mad about that, but most artists are smart enough to not sell out to Northrup Grumman, OpenAI, Nestlé, nor to your favourite local crypto coin or gambling website.

Re: Stop eating Lady Gaga's Oreos

#42

Post by scoofy »

nxc18 wrote: post #18

Author is way off base. Might as well tell me to stop breathing air, except they stopped selling air 6 years ago and I’ve been gasping ever since. Chromatica Oreos were absolutely wonderful (as far as mass produced garbage that is unfit for human consumption is concerned) and I miss them dearly. Telling me to stop eating them is like telling me to stop seeing a boyfriend who died tragically years ago. Worse, it bring…

There is a premise in the "selling out" scenario that assumes the artist is accepting money from a company so that company can sell more of the same -- or even a WORSE -- product using the artist to market the product. This CAN be true, and humans have a cogitative bias to remember negativity over positives. So we remember the times when the artists screwed over their fans... and hence we boo them.

When marketing collaborations are used to inform people of something actually good, then they can actually be great for everyone. The best example is Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream collaborations. It's hard to communicate "no, it's hard to understand, but this blend of candies is especially worth trying," so the best way to do that is to have a celebrity vouch for it. And, what do you know, those collaborations have been wildly successful. It's hard to convince people that "putting ice cream cone in the ice cream" is surprisingly good, but if you just put Stephen Colbert on the label with a big thumbs up, most people will give it a try.

Marketing can be manipulative, but it can also be very, very helpful to customers who don't have perfect information. This is exactly the point of Rory Sutherland's book Alchemy: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26210508-alchemy

Re: Stop eating Lady Gaga's Oreos

#43

Post by [deleted] »

mosburger wrote: post #32
gkoberger wrote: post #5

I don't know if I buy this framing. The intro Pearl Jam story is only noteworthy because it's unique. Cobain wasn't one of a million examples of counter-culture; we still talk about him today because it was uniquely his brand (to be incredibly famous while seemingly rejecting the fame). Michael Jackson's hair caught on fire filming a Pepsi commercial in 1984. Bill Cosby famously hawked Jell-O Pudding. Sports stars we…

I think it's cyclical. Punk in the early 80s was a reaction to the excesses of 70s superbands (e.g. Johnny Rotten's "I hate Pink Floyd" t-shirt). Then things built up again to "monsters of rock" arena tours, The Spice Girls, and hair bands before getting torn down again by the likes of Nirvana. (Hell, rock and roll was born as an anti-establishment thing in the 1950s) Maybe we're just due for another one of the infle…

[deleted]

Re: Stop eating Lady Gaga's Oreos

#44

Post by cm2012 »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #8
gkoberger wrote: post #5

I don't know if I buy this framing. The intro Pearl Jam story is only noteworthy because it's unique. Cobain wasn't one of a million examples of counter-culture; we still talk about him today because it was uniquely his brand (to be incredibly famous while seemingly rejecting the fame). Michael Jackson's hair caught on fire filming a Pepsi commercial in 1984. Bill Cosby famously hawked Jell-O Pudding. Sports stars we…

And in those examples you don’t see any difference to: >Maroon 5 is covering Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds” as a tribute to Hyundai Because that sentence hits hard in the smh.

The Medici Banking family paid Michelangelo to paint the Medici Chapel.

Scrovegni Chapel by Giotto was made to help the reputation of the scrovegni family who were big creditors.

This is as old as time.

Re: Stop eating Lady Gaga's Oreos

#47

Post by georgemcbay »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #23

I like the premise. However i think there's an angle about the death of religion. It happened before most people were ready to stop being religous. Energy went to sports teams, heretical charismatics and celebrities. I do worry that jake paul or mr beast or someone like that will become president. Oprah probably could have if she'd tried. People read one person's opinion now almost as much if not more than people rea…

> I do worry that jake paul or mr beast or someone like that will become president.

Not that I'm happy about it or want it to continue, but we're already there, have been since 2016.

Re: Stop eating Lady Gaga's Oreos

#48

Post by tptacek »

I have a problem with artists doing commerce under the guise of art. I listen, I read, and I watch because I want to inhabit, even if just for a moment, the mind of another human. I want to feel what it’s like to be them, and in so doing, I want to better understand what it’s like to be me. But if I journey to the center of someone’s psyche and all I find there is a billboard for Pizza Hut, I’m turning around.

Kind of sounds like they have a bigger problem with what everyone else is doing when they listen to popular music. One can simply not listen to Lady Gaga; I've succeeded at that for decades.

Re: Stop eating Lady Gaga's Oreos

#49

Post by cm2012 »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #16

> Why don’t the poor people vote to take all the money away from the rich people and redistribute it amongst themselves? It's because the Powers That Be don't put it on the ballot. If you put "take 99% of the money from the 1000 richest billionaires (about $10 trillion, I think), and nobody has to pay any income taxes for the next four years" on some sort of national ballot, I think there's a very good chance that it…

That law would take a hammer to average US quality of life almost overnight. Its hard to state how dramatic the societal upheaval would be and how destructive.
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