On Advertising

Advertising is pervasive in our modern consumer culture. One of my favorite jokes from Futurama involves a man from 1999 complaining about how in the year 3000, commercials are broadcast into his dreams:

"That's awful, its like brainwashing." A friend asks, "Didn't you have ads in the 20th century?"

"Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV, and radio. And in magazines, and movies. And at ball games, and on buses, milk cartons, T-shirts, bananas, and written on the sky. But not in dreams, no-siree!"

That never fails to crack me up, because it is so true! I'm sure it is only a matter of time before we have advertisements beamed directly into our brains. Now, I don't think that advertising is an inherently evil thing. Obviously we live in a consumerist society and as such, it follows that sellers need a way to communicate what they're offering to buyers. And yet...

Where does one draw the line between manipulation and effective advertising?

I occasionally listen to "binaural beats" videos to relax. I don't really believe all the hype but I do find the sounds to be pretty unique and maybe its just placebo effect, but I do enjoy relaxing while listening to one. I noticed something in the YouTube comments, which is always a dangerous place to find oneself, unless you're actively looking to become dumber.

It was a reply from someone comparing binaural beats to getting high; the seemingly legitimate person said "yeah this video is totally trippy, I'm going to save my last sensestamp for watching this again" And what, pray tell, is a Sensestamp?

A quick Google search came up with one sketchy website (lots of animal-meme-based-advertising), and a ton of Youtube comments. All of the comments had the same type of grammatical mistakes as the website itself, which is supposedly offering "completely legal" chemical-laced stamps that you can lick to experience a trip. Sounds totally legit!

My money's on it being the website's creator doing some guerrilla marketing, and I'm going to guess that we're going to increasingly see this form of marketing pervade the social media.

Is it only a matter of time before commercials invade our dreams?