Normally I’d say that hype/buzz related distortions of a scientific field are a shame(though the salmon paper is hilarious); but in the case of marketers, anything that throws a monkey wrench in their progress is good by me.
Once you exhaust the relatively limited genre of ‘advertising that exists to inform people of a product’s existence’, it’s pretty much straight ‘attempts to weaponize any and all limitations of the target’s bounded rationality’ from there on in. Hard to figure out a way to cleanly ban it without excessive risk of collateral damage; but let’s not mince words here; this is an overtly adversarial process. Having somebody drizzling specially crafted input intended to create an affective hook associated with their product into your face is more or less the human equivalent of having somebody attempting a SQL injection attack.
Well, that’s pretty much the case for all advertising, and all storefronts, and all wafting bakery smells down the street, etc etc, right?
It’s all designed to tap into the less-rational part of your brain without your consent.
Then again, so is perfume, beautiful hair, or a perfectly-toned body.
You cannot ban it. If you do it, the collateral damage will be a population unprepared for it once GCHQ and its ilk start using the same methods. Which they already did.
If you want people to get hardened against this, I am afraid the only choice available is to let it be unleashed - and provide insight and detection/defense methods.
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