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Leonard Nimoy's Advice to a Biracial Girl in 1968

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Re: Leonard Nimoy's Advice to a Biracial Girl in 1968

#11

Post by vacri »

WalterBright wrote: post #8
omegaham wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, and you'll see this everywhere that you see the intersection of pop culture and the advice to "be yourself." This isn't a dig at Nimoy's advice - it's damn good advice . But it doesn't sell compared to You're worthless unless you buy our stuff . The only reason why they can print Nimoy's advice is that the "Be a FAD" ad is right next to it. And not only that, the earnest advice itself is often packaged and cyni…

I always enjoyed the irony in the 1970's Dr Pepper ads that exhorted people to join the non-conformists.

Similarly in the atheism movement movement there's 'freethinkers'. It annoys me that being a freethinker is just subscribing to another labelled group with a doctrine, as opposed to being a free thinker. A small space makes a lot of semantic difference.

Re: Leonard Nimoy's Advice to a Biracial Girl in 1968

#12

Post by pserwylo »

mcguire wrote: post #2

Am I alone in finding the irony in... Be IN start a fad ...the ad next to the article?

Although being off topic, I think this is still a good observation to make.

About five years ago, I was looking up something related to bulimia. Low and behold, I ended up on a site that had advice for young people with this disorder, and the keyword ads on the right of the page included a bunch of "Lose weight fast using this pill" type ads. I was quite horrified (and reported the ads to the ad network).

Re: Leonard Nimoy's Advice to a Biracial Girl in 1968

#14

Post by TeMPOraL »

pserwylo wrote: post #12
mcguire wrote: post #2

Am I alone in finding the irony in... Be IN start a fad ...the ad next to the article?

Although being off topic, I think this is still a good observation to make. About five years ago, I was looking up something related to bulimia. Low and behold, I ended up on a site that had advice for young people with this disorder, and the keyword ads on the right of the page included a bunch of "Lose weight fast using this pill" type ads. I was quite horrified (and reported the ads to the ad network).

While the case you describe might have been an accident, the big problem with the marketing-surveillance state Internet is becoming is that someone somewhen may - or maybe already did - decide to run such ads on purpose. After all, what's a better market for diet pills than people suffering from bulimia or anorexia? What's a better market for anti-depressants than people with suicidal thoughts?

Re: Leonard Nimoy's Advice to a Biracial Girl in 1968

#15

Post by icebraining »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #9
WalterBright wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always enjoyed the irony in the 1970's Dr Pepper ads that exhorted people to join the non-conformists.

Yup. Reminds me of a quote: "Revolution has already been televised. Revolution has been merchandised . Revolution is a commodity, a packaged lifestyle, available at your local mall. $19.95 gets you the black mask, the spray can, the "Crush the Fascists" protest sign, and access to your blog where you can write about the police brutality you suffered when you chained yourself to a fire hydrant. Capitalism has learned…

One of my favorite examples of that is the game Guerrilla War [1], made by SNK - a step above and beyond the infamous t-shirts of Che.

[1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_War_(video_game)

Re: Leonard Nimoy's Advice to a Biracial Girl in 1968

#16

Post by icebraining »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #14
pserwylo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although being off topic, I think this is still a good observation to make. About five years ago, I was looking up something related to bulimia. Low and behold, I ended up on a site that had advice for young people with this disorder, and the keyword ads on the right of the page included a bunch of "Lose weight fast using this pill" type ads. I was quite horrified (and reported the ads to the ad network).

While the case you describe might have been an accident, the big problem with the marketing-surveillance state Internet is becoming is that someone somewhen may - or maybe already did - decide to run such ads on purpose. After all, what's a better market for diet pills than people suffering from bulimia or anorexia? What's a better market for anti-depressants than people with suicidal thoughts?

I don't get your last example - getting antidepressants to people with suicidal thoughts sounds great to me.

In any case, while I have no doubt that people have and will continue to make such decisions, I doubt they will become the norm - they're too prone to lawsuits, and too inefficient. Instead, Google et all will continue to develop algorithms that detect and exploit those correlations from raw data, so that no one will be able to tell why your profile was selected to be shown diet pills. Which is much more insidious, since it diffuses the moral responsibility.

Re: Leonard Nimoy's Advice to a Biracial Girl in 1968

#17

Post by proveanegative »

vacri wrote: post #11
WalterBright wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always enjoyed the irony in the 1970's Dr Pepper ads that exhorted people to join the non-conformists.

Similarly in the atheism movement movement there's 'freethinkers'. It annoys me that being a freethinker is just subscribing to another labelled group with a doctrine, as opposed to being a free thinker. A small space makes a lot of semantic difference.

This kind of thing tends to happen to historical terms. Groups that trace their lineage from group X call themselves X, especially if the name has positive associations. This happened with, to use a somewhat controversial example, the term "liberal" in the US but, curiously, not in Europe. In computing you could say that this happened, and continues to happen, with the term "hacker" ("growth hackers" are a recent example).

Re: Leonard Nimoy's Advice to a Biracial Girl in 1968

#18

Post by ht_th »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #14
pserwylo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although being off topic, I think this is still a good observation to make. About five years ago, I was looking up something related to bulimia. Low and behold, I ended up on a site that had advice for young people with this disorder, and the keyword ads on the right of the page included a bunch of "Lose weight fast using this pill" type ads. I was quite horrified (and reported the ads to the ad network).

While the case you describe might have been an accident, the big problem with the marketing-surveillance state Internet is becoming is that someone somewhen may - or maybe already did - decide to run such ads on purpose. After all, what's a better market for diet pills than people suffering from bulimia or anorexia? What's a better market for anti-depressants than people with suicidal thoughts?

You might be interested in the 15th episode (of the 4th series) of Person of Interest, "Q & A" (Aired at February 17, 2015), in which depressed and addicted people were targeted with special adds to drive profit up. I won't spoil the whole episode, but it certainly made me think about our implicit, almost tacit trust in search engines, social media sites, and other services we don't fully understand (as users, because we don't have access to the source or data), but which we use daily. I can only imagine our dependence on these services to grow in the future, while our understanding of these complex systems does not grow at the same rate (or at all).

Re: Leonard Nimoy's Advice to a Biracial Girl in 1968

#19

Post by josephlord »

vacri wrote: post #11
WalterBright wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always enjoyed the irony in the 1970's Dr Pepper ads that exhorted people to join the non-conformists.

Similarly in the atheism movement movement there's 'freethinkers'. It annoys me that being a freethinker is just subscribing to another labelled group with a doctrine, as opposed to being a free thinker. A small space makes a lot of semantic difference.

Atheism is not a doctrine any more than not believing in Santa Claus or the tooth fairy is a doctrine. It is possible that there are doctrines within atheism but atheism itself is not one.

I'm not bothered about the term free thinker and wouldn't necessarily have linked it with atheism.

Re: Leonard Nimoy's Advice to a Biracial Girl in 1968

#20

Post by TeMPOraL »

ht_th wrote: post #18
TeMPOraL wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the case you describe might have been an accident, the big problem with the marketing-surveillance state Internet is becoming is that someone somewhen may - or maybe already did - decide to run such ads on purpose. After all, what's a better market for diet pills than people suffering from bulimia or anorexia? What's a better market for anti-depressants than people with suicidal thoughts?

You might be interested in the 15th episode (of the 4th series) of Person of Interest , "Q & A" (Aired at February 17, 2015), in which depressed and addicted people were targeted with special adds to drive profit up. I won't spoil the whole episode, but it certainly made me think about our implicit, almost tacit trust in search engines, social media sites, and other services we don't fully understand (as users, becau…

That was exactly the episode I was subtly referencing in my comment. BTW. after watching it, I thought that the way the data was collected in that episode is a writer's fiction. Imagine my surprise when I learned few days later that it's actually true, and it's what Apple and Microsoft do.
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