Conspiracy theorists... are they all just a bit thick?

[coldel]

jameswills said:

coldel said:

So, going back to the original statement that 99% of advertising is propaganda. This includes coke cans and chocolate bars.

The reality is there is a very small percentage that go to the extreme you mentioned, the majority, and its huge, are just companies looking to sell product, increase ROI, raise brand awareness. Satisfy shareholders, create growth, employ people, sell more product, employ more people.

I think you're misunderstanding the point I am making, everything in the media space is an advert, propaganda aimed at you the viewer to manipulate your thinking from encouraging you to buy things, to eat something, hold a certain view or to vote a certain way. I don't see an advert for a chocolate bar any different than a "news" article on the BBC website. Both are selling something or training your thought.

I understand that, and I said that right way back.

Lets focus on advertising as that is the point in hand...the idea of psychological profiling or propaganda (which is the wrong term for it but of course used by a CT to make it feel more nefarious than it actually is) is not a new one, Advertising is millennia old, the format has just changed from men on the streets to posters to tv to internet. The psychological profiling designed to make you want the product or service has been in evidence for hundreds, if not, thousands of years. The word propaganda is completely incorrect by definition and misleading, interestingly it is used to deliberately mislead away from the truth in this case.

What of the news? We have always had politically leaned news, if anything if you went back say 500 years, you got nothing but government controlled news alongside back street gossip. We can better list out and measure news leaning and political bias, as I've said, we all have biases. But again, there is nothing new here.

However to lump news and advertising in the same bucket called 'propaganda' is fundamentally incorrect and attempts quite badly to over simplify what is a much more complicated landscape of industries.

[paulguitar]

jameswills said:

I don't see an advert for a chocolate bar any different than a "news" article on the BBC website. Both are selling something or training your thought.

[coldel]

paulguitar said:

jameswills said:

I don't see an advert for a chocolate bar any different than a "news" article on the BBC website. Both are selling something or training your thought.

I am going to take a bit of a punt. But I am assuming this is some sort of reference to climate change and the BBC.

But for sure, if the BBC has a leaning that favours the climate change agenda its probably because the majority of science is pointing that way and it is reporting in line with that. A CT might flip that and just say they are all 'part of the great climate rip off' but who knows. I can see why the word propaganda gets tossed in the mix here.

As for advertising for an independent company whose main goals are to satisfy investors, secure the employment security of its staff, create growth strategies be it through product innovation, product distribution or a mixture of both - quite clearly this is not the same as the above and they are not the same. This isn't propaganda, this is called brand growth and ROI which is what advertising supports as part of a wider timetable of activation and activity.

[jameswills]

No I think they are very closely linked, and go hand in hand. You can't just see an advert as wanting you to buy a product, it's doing way more than that by the people they use, the situations and context. If you watched today's adverts in the UK you'd be thinking that most families are of mixed race or half the population are gay for example. You may think this is just some levelling up policy, but it really isn't, it goes way deeper than that. It is whether you like it or not, programming your thoughts. Adverts very much lean into your emotional wellbeing to grab you and paint a picture that is often not real. They mislead.

[paulguitar]

jameswills said:

No I think they are very closely linked, and go hand in hand. You can't just see an advert as wanting you to buy a product, it's doing way more than that by the people they use, the situations and context. If you watched today's adverts in the UK you'd be thinking that most families are of mixed race or half the population are gay for example. You may think this is just some levelling up policy, but it really isn't, it goes way deeper than that. It is whether you like it or not, programming your thoughts. Adverts very much lean into your emotional wellbeing to grab you and paint a picture that is often not real. They mislead.

Are 'they' trying to turn us all gay then?

[coldel]

jameswills said:

No I think they are very closely linked, and go hand in hand. You can't just see an advert as wanting you to buy a product, it's doing way more than that by the people they use, the situations and context. If you watched today's adverts in the UK you'd be thinking that most families are of mixed race or half the population are gay for example. You may think this is just some levelling up policy, but it really isn't, it goes way deeper than that. It is whether you like it or not, programming your thoughts. Adverts very much lean into your emotional wellbeing to grab you and paint a picture that is often not real. They mislead.

They mislead? Who are 'they'?

I work for a media company, this is not the case. It really isn't. Advertising is expensive, and most companies have a one hit at it opportunity per product push. I can guarantee you the people in charge of these companies advertising their products and services have none of the above in their agenda.

It is true that they go through a process of profiling and wanting people to think, feel and experience things. But its not the nefarious view you have above. Their laser focus is on ROI and Brand Uplift, this is even part of the process, where the media planners measure these to demonstrate to advertisers that the planning they suggested had the impact they had in the brief.

There will be then a targeting, you use different media formats, audiences, locations, etc to reach the audience you have targeted, and yes you have creative teams that build out creatives which are then tested against test audiences via research to maximise the impact. But the above, it really isn't part of the creative process. There is no one sitting in the room saying that we must have mixed families in the imagery to convince everyone thats the world they live in, none.

All these companies care about is brand uplift, increased sales and ROI. They will use the best means to get it. There is no side agenda to use chocolate bar advertising to convince the masses via some sort of huge social experiment.

[Bill]

coldel said:

I can see why the word propaganda gets tossed in the mix here.

propaganda

information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view.
https://g.co/kgs/W5zqB1G

Very emotive...

[Al Gorithum]

jameswills said:

No I think they are very closely linked, and go hand in hand. You can't just see an advert as wanting you to buy a product, it's doing way more than that by the people they use, the situations and context. If you watched today's adverts in the UK you'd be thinking that most families are of mixed race or half the population are gay for example. You may think this is just some levelling up policy, but it really isn't, it goes way deeper than that. It is whether you like it or not, programming your thoughts. Adverts very much lean into your emotional wellbeing to grab you and paint a picture that is often not real. They mislead.

Maybe you should accept that adverts are for selling stuff. Nothing more/nothing less. CT's seem to like conflations but good luck to them as they can't see past their cognitive biases.

[coldel]

Al Gorithum said:

jameswills said:

No I think they are very closely linked, and go hand in hand. You can't just see an advert as wanting you to buy a product, it's doing way more than that by the people they use, the situations and context. If you watched today's adverts in the UK you'd be thinking that most families are of mixed race or half the population are gay for example. You may think this is just some levelling up policy, but it really isn't, it goes way deeper than that. It is whether you like it or not, programming your thoughts. Adverts very much lean into your emotional wellbeing to grab you and paint a picture that is often not real. They mislead.

Maybe you should accept that adverts are for selling stuff. Nothing more/nothing less. CT's seem to like conflations but good luck to them as they can't see past their cognitive biases.

This is pretty much it.

Companies live and die by staying ahead, creating growth, securing the best talent, innovating and developing - advertising is a big part of that process.

But hey, maybe I am part of the conspiracy

[coldel]

Bill said:

propaganda

information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view.
https://g.co/kgs/W5zqB1G

Very emotive...

Well news is pretty emotive, wrapped around often not very well established facts. As per the description yes every single news outlet from the extreme right wing stuff like info wars to the more centric BBC will have some sort of company leaning. So I can see in its purest form of definition its propaganda.

Advertising is not propaganda, it really isn't.

I can though see why a CT might get into a place where they cannot see the difference where they see things that aren't really a thing.

[Rufus Stone]

Who_Goes_Blue said:

Hope you are all carrying your scotch eggs around to keep the Rona away

I carry two in my pants, it impresses the ladies.

[u-boat]

Dagnir said:

What doesn't help is the blatant bias towards a progressive, post-modern world.

I have to watch stupid people being mislead......and I hate it.

How do you know that you’re not the stupid person being mislead?

Or even just of average intelligence but more susceptible to being influenced in certain ways and not using common sense or logic.

Comments like yours about the progressive agenda and how so many people are being misled but you can somehow see through it all etc, usually make my conspiracy theorist or easily led person warning go off tbh.

Edited by u-boat on Tuesday 23 April 13:51

[isaldiri]

Blown2CV said:

isaldiri said:

Blown2CV said:

and that's the post truth world we live in. Previously we overall trusted empirically-derived evidence as an indicator towards truth/facts. If we didn't understand what that meant, we trusted people that were verified experts. If we didn't know how to verify an expert, we trusted people who reached the public arena by virtue of their excellent contributions to the single body of knowledge which was 'science'. Yes we just had to sort of put faith in it for the most part, but it was accepted truth.

Now we have a parallel world including its own body of 'knowledge', 'experts' and means to 'verify' them, approaches to 'research', 'evidence' and of course its own 'facts'.

It's all pretty fked up now because for the vast majority of people, either of these worlds requires at some level just a bit of faith as it reaches the boundary of expertise and understanding.

So, now it seems to be basically which do you prefer, rather than one refutes the other.

Well, when these 'verified experts' are clearly also misrepresenting things (as seen over the pandemic) because they believe it is important to get compliance in the belief that it is for the greater good, it can't really be a surprise that they have, in many ways, directly exacerbated the whole mess as well.... People, and not just the bad conspiracy theorists, can and do believe in whatever they want to.

i can't tell whether you are referring there to actual experts or to the parallel world of nutters and their belief system

I'm referring to the government/public health officials that

- at every turn decided to emphasise that covid was a very serious risk to everyone rather than being very highly age stratified
- refused in spring 2020 to acknowledge that 'the peak' had passed for ages despite the official data clearly showing that weeks before
- presented a highly misleading graph to justify the 2nd lockdown (by which time they were well aware was already incorrect)
- stated that it was all the bad unvaccinated people clogging up hospitals in summer 2021 when official NHS data was clearly showing that was not the case
- repeatedly stated that post infection immunity didn't apply and only vaccination would provide immunity
- (like chromegrill earlier) ignored the fact that the risk/benefit of the vaccines for the younger population was very much the opposite of older people in constantly trying to push that younger group to get vaccinated for little if any benefit using overall population risks which were not relevant to them in order to justify that


You tell me whether those were 'actual experts' or 'nutters and their belief system'.

[Bill]

coldel said:

Well news is pretty emotive, wrapped around often not very well established facts. As per the description yes every single news outlet from the extreme right wing stuff like info wars to the more centric BBC will have some sort of company leaning. So I can see in its purest form of definition its propaganda.

It's a false equivalence. Making out that infowars is the flip side of the BBC and therefore just as (in)valid.

[coldel]

Bill said:

coldel said:

Well news is pretty emotive, wrapped around often not very well established facts. As per the description yes every single news outlet from the extreme right wing stuff like info wars to the more centric BBC will have some sort of company leaning. So I can see in its purest form of definition its propaganda.

It's a false equivalence. Making out that infowars is the flip side of the BBC and therefore just as (in)valid.

I never said it was a flip. I just picked two news sites as examples of political leaning and that every news site has a leaning of some sort.

[coldel]

Ad hominem fallacy in full flow over in covid thread, I wondered what happened to willis in our conversation

[Rufus Stone]

coldel said:

Ad hominem fallacy in full flow over in covid thread, I wondered what happened to willis in our conversation

Let me guess, they are glad they saw through all the bullst and came out the other side with their critical thought in tact and no increased heath risks?

[coldel]

Rufus Stone said:

coldel said:

Ad hominem fallacy in full flow over in covid thread, I wondered what happened to willis in our conversation

Let me guess, they are glad they saw through all the bullst and came out the other side with their critical thought in tact and no increased heath risks?

I just tried to develop the idea of what propaganda is...I agreed to a point (being objective of course) around the area of news but disagreed on the wider context of all tv shows and especially advertising as the claim is patently false.

Was 'just answering questions' :shrug:

Edited by coldel on Tuesday 23 April 15:13

[Blown2CV]

isaldiri said:

Blown2CV said:

isaldiri said:

Blown2CV said:

and that's the post truth world we live in. Previously we overall trusted empirically-derived evidence as an indicator towards truth/facts. If we didn't understand what that meant, we trusted people that were verified experts. If we didn't know how to verify an expert, we trusted people who reached the public arena by virtue of their excellent contributions to the single body of knowledge which was 'science'. Yes we just had to sort of put faith in it for the most part, but it was accepted truth.

Now we have a parallel world including its own body of 'knowledge', 'experts' and means to 'verify' them, approaches to 'research', 'evidence' and of course its own 'facts'.

It's all pretty fked up now because for the vast majority of people, either of these worlds requires at some level just a bit of faith as it reaches the boundary of expertise and understanding.

So, now it seems to be basically which do you prefer, rather than one refutes the other.

Well, when these 'verified experts' are clearly also misrepresenting things (as seen over the pandemic) because they believe it is important to get compliance in the belief that it is for the greater good, it can't really be a surprise that they have, in many ways, directly exacerbated the whole mess as well.... People, and not just the bad conspiracy theorists, can and do believe in whatever they want to.

i can't tell whether you are referring there to actual experts or to the parallel world of nutters and their belief system

I'm referring to the government/public health officials that

- at every turn decided to emphasise that covid was a very serious risk to everyone rather than being very highly age stratified
- refused in spring 2020 to acknowledge that 'the peak' had passed for ages despite the official data clearly showing that weeks before
- presented a highly misleading graph to justify the 2nd lockdown (by which time they were well aware was already incorrect)
- stated that it was all the bad unvaccinated people clogging up hospitals in summer 2021 when official NHS data was clearly showing that was not the case
- repeatedly stated that post infection immunity didn't apply and only vaccination would provide immunity
- (like chromegrill earlier) ignored the fact that the risk/benefit of the vaccines for the younger population was very much the opposite of older people in constantly trying to push that younger group to get vaccinated for little if any benefit using overall population risks which were not relevant to them in order to justify that


You tell me whether those were 'actual experts' or 'nutters and their belief system'.

ah you're a CTist ok. COVID thread is that way --->

[Tankrizzo]

Rufus Stone said:

Let me guess, they are glad they saw through all the bullst and came out the other side with their critical thought in tact and no increased heath risks?

They're just doing what they always do ten times a week - saying how everyone else were stupid sheep and fell for it whereas they and their ilk were the enlightened few. All they really do is rehash the same ste they've been saying for years.