Sarah MeiVerified account

I read a story over the weekend imagining a future where advertising is illegal, and I can’t stop thinking about it - especially in light of our current efforts to understand how companies and countries purchase influence & outcomes.

It was written in 1973, but the author must have had a magic mirror to 45 years in the future, because their characterization of instagram influencers is just so spot on.

The story is this one. There’s A LOT of plot, & a lot of prescient imaginings, including: - fast always-on internet - realtime streams of audience sentiment used to tune content in realtime - scripted “reality” tv I’m still sifting through the layers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Girl_Who_Was_Plugged_In …

Another interesting layer is that the story was written by a fierce feminist woman, writing as a man for an audience of men.

In one part she’s explaining why a woman with a traumatic past might not be interested in sex, and I thought, “why on earth would she feel the need to explain something so obv- OH.” Because men don’t know this stuff, and she’s a dude writing for dudes.

Anyway the big idea that I’ve been dwelling on is that if you outlaw advertising because of its pernicious negative influence on people, it doesn’t disappear - it just gets harder to identify. It gets subtle - the boundaries between content & advertising blur.