You know how people want to interact with products? By using them. Not "engaging" with them as an abstract concept on Twitter.
They don't give a crap about having a conversation with a Mt Dew representative. They do give a crap about a YouTube video of a guy jumping out of a plane with a wing-suit and if it happens to be covered with Mt Dew logos, it might just help move some product.
You know what all this "social relationship" and "engagement" talk reminds me of? Telemarketing. New buzzwords for what seems to be about as effective as calling up someone while they're eating dinner and trying to talk about their favorite brand of dish soap.
Why is this being disparaged? This has been a known technique of promoting every product from rock bands to web sites. Well within the realm of possibility.
I don't understand the premise of your comment. Having a promotional motive is not something that falls under the umbrella of 'enshittification'. So even if your first sentence is right in a strong way, it doesn't support your second sentence.
Hell yes. +9000 for your post. To me, the solution is much transparency around paid product placement through strong regulation.
See "Parasocial interaction".
Parasocial interaction (PSI) refers to a kind of psychological relationship experienced by an audience in their mediated encounters with performers in the mass media, particularly on television and on online platforms. Viewers or listeners come to consider media personalities as friends, despite having no or limited interactions with them. PSI is described as an illusory experience, such that media audiences interact with personas (e.g., talk show hosts, celebrities, fictional characters, social media influencers) as if they are engaged in a reciprocal relationship with them. The term was coined by Donald Horton and Richard Wohl in 1956.
I think the problem is most brands don't pay for sponsored content to "have a good article written about them". They pay to push an agenda. They are completely different things, but at the end of the day the paying party is expecting a positive result on their investment.
This is bending the public perceptions on a subject in a subtler, but still pernicious, way.
frame public relations and marketing folk as cynical manipulators who don't fall for the illusions they create.
The post-modern environment has had about 60 years to develop since that book was written and I think the culture has deteriorated and I believe that, today, the image makers really do live in the "the matrix" they've created and have trouble distinguishing it from reality. (I think of how Valmont in Dangerous Liaisons really fell for his victim Madame de Tourvel.)
My contacts with local business people and people who sell ads for radio and newspapers have convinced me that prices for advertising were too high for a long time because the people who buy advertising get gratification from hearing their name on the radio and the people who advertise won an auction because they get more gratification from hearing their name on the radio more than anyone else.
Years ago somebody who was an "influencer" would try to appear authentic (not an "influencer") but today authentic people will try to look inauthentic ("i pretend to be an influencer even though I don't get paid") to get credibility.
People under this spell will run ads in situations when they clearly shouldn't and they'll be astonishingly resistant to anyone who tries to talk sense into them.
(Your desktop usage does make income for Microsoft since your OEM bought Windows for you. If they annoy you enough you might switch to Linux, MacOS, etc. Unfortunately your OEM probably wants to wreck the value of a $2000 computer they sold you by selling $2 worth of annoying ads.)
Political wonks talk about it a lot and have various daydreams of having that type of power.
It's not talked about much, and when it is you can counter it by labeling it as a "kids these days" type argument.
reply