And while there may have been some influence at the margins by media -- all the stuff about creating the "positive cultural association" with the cool pot-smoking rebel vs. "negative cultural association" with the fucked-up junkie loser etc. -- it's not the main thing at all
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy and
Drug use rates had way more to do with someone's overall material circumstances, which swamped the effect of TV commercials and celebrity endorsements and so on
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy and
Anyway it's not just DARE, DARE is just the most obvious embarrassing failure It was a long long time ago and I don't think I did a particularly good job but I wrote my undergrad thesis on 20th century American advertising, and the weird detached incestuous world ad men lived in
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy and
DARE was an outgrowth of the Ad Council, which has existed for decades (since WWII) as a nonprofit initiative for the ad industry to sell itself to the government as using their powers for good to propagandize people into being better citizens and not just being greedy bastards
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy and
And the evidence that ANY of the Ad Council's campaigns actually WORK (whether or not you approve of the cause in question -- it includes wartime propaganda and military recruitment but also public health campaigns, antiracism ads, etc) has always been very sketchy
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy and
It always comes back to "Okay logically there's probably some effect of blasting this stuff at people all the time but the problem is all the data is coming from the people getting paid to tell you you're not wasting your money The principal-agent problem is massive"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy and
My thesis was a typical college thesis about the idea that these ads are something the professional class felt compelled to create *for their own sake*, as a way of telling a story to themselves about what American values were and what kind of citizens they themselves were
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy and
An industrial-capitalist version of ritual and religion -- whether the ads ever really change anything is almost beside the point, just as the ancients never really did empirical studies if their prayers to the gods actually changed the likelihood of a good harvest
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy and
And that's kind of why I have this attitude about this whole discussion Like if you just fundamentally find it offensive there's pro-military imagery in Captain Marvel then fine, I won't argue with your right to reject it for that reason
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy and
But I'm just not interested in the conversation that "Okay, the Air Force sank resources into it, so as a work of art it's compromised and there's an obvious *real meaning* of the movie that's pro-military and everything else is bullshit" Believe that if you want I guess
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Captain Marvel is telling a certain set of stories, and some of the people who put movie into getting the movie made wanted it to just tell a story that "the Air Force is awesome", just like a movie with Beats by Dre headphones in it is trying to get you to buy those headphones
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy and
But that's not all it is, and for many people likely not even the main thing it is Like I personally seriously doubt Captain Marvel materially moved the needle on Air Force recruitment (*especially* because the "Girl Power" backlash swamped all discourse about the movie)
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy and
Like fuck let's just put it like this If the point of trashing Captain Marvel is to try to stop the Air Force from carrying out its sinister agenda by pointing out that shallow Girl Power feminism is bullshit, it worked You succeeded, give yourself a hand, you won
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