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Corporations are soulless - a machine, designed by capitalistic evolution to be the most efficient money-eating creature possible - and so they have no values of their own. They are reflections of what society wants, because society's capital is what they eat. And so-

Aella

@Aella_Girl

advertisements are the most honest reflection of society's desires. All the corporations with values independent from society, died off, because it couldn't eat. Thus, marketing is a brilliant value-reflection machine. If you wanna know about a society, look at its billboards.

8:56 PM · Jan 15, 2019

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The idea that corporations are shoving shitty ideals down our throat is so silly, to me. For companies to have values comes dangerously close to giving companies a soul. They are just machines built to feed off of us, and the shitty ideals they shove down our throat are *ours*.

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Or the weighted average of the desires of people with money to spend, adjusted by their willingness to spend it.

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I disagree. Things fulfilling honest desires don't need much advertising - people want them anyways. Advertising is trying to create new desires. It does so not only by latching into existing desires, but also fears, expectations, norms, as well as surprise, joy, entertainment.

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How do you reconcile this view with the intent to deceive and manipulate human psychology in order to push people towards products as an honest reflection? I think marketing mutates desires, judging society by that mutation seems wrong.

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I disagree, advertisements purpose is to generate brand recognition, not to appeal to consumers per se. Generating controversy furthers this while at the same time not necessarily reflect in society's values

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This also is so tied to socioeconomics … do people really want pay day loans beyond need?

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I'm sure you are aware that in some major metropolitan areas (New York) the billboards actually scan and read everyone's data on their cell phones (ie cookies) and based on numbers of similar cookies will change the advertising.