Why not both? If you're big and don't care about your consumer beyond their role as a source of money, maybe a stupid consumer is desirable? I think it just happens to be that almost anyone in a position of entrenched power, in government or industry, thinks they benefit from a stupid populace.
Profiting from people who can afford stupid only encourages stupid. Then we end up with stupid being promoted as what people want because it's profitable.
I disagree; there is some definition of 'stupid' that exists in the same shape and form in most consumers. It stems from laziness, desire for showing off and instant gratification, and lack of critical thinking when being bombarded with marketing BS like cool visuals, gimmicky features and awesome keywords. The same self-interest leads to them being stupid and, usually, staying stupid.
The stupidity of the average consumer manifests itself in not wanting to "waste time" with some "nerdy tech thingamajig" (boohoo muh computer is slow, must be the viruses and need more RAM, lemme buy myself a new one, ooh look the slimmest model, lemme get that. Soldered everything? Non-user replaceable battery? Huh, wtf are those. It's slim and pretty tho) or comparing products on the shelf to make the best, most practical choice (it has X famous brand name that's associated with cool and expensive, great to show off to friends, especially on social media because everyone on there cares. Oh there's a vocal bunch speaking about bad reliability, poor quality that falls apart 1 year and 1 day after purchase and terrible price/performance ratio? Must be lies spread by dem haters).
Yup, pre-purchase research and post-purchase diagnostics (not even asking for much, just googling a problem to see if it's unfixable/too expensive to fix) are things today's consumers would rather not 'waste time' with because they clearly have better things to do that aren't a waste of time, like taking more selfies for Snapchat, raking in likes and loves on Facebook and Instagram and surfing the internet (anyone up for more shopping and getting 'inspiration' from friends on what to buy next to one-up them?) on their $2000 Facebook/web browsing machine and $1000 phone.
The best part is very few of these people learn from others and their own mistakes. They'll continue to buy the same crappy products because they saw a cool ad or all their friends are talking about it without any thinking or research. They'll stay loyal to overpriced brands with poor reliability because 'dat brand name doe' and continue with their need to see and be seen having/doing/wanting cool things. Simple reading to make an informed buying decision? Too uncool! F-that!
I take issue with the word "stupid" being used this way to refer to the masses in design discourse.
People don't have to be stupid to be manipulated in the way the author suspected; it just takes being busy, having a specific goal that one wants to realize (buy software) and focusing on it, and not being particularly interested in the internal implementation details of the mechanism of manipulation.
I wouldn't say people are inherently stupid. Rather they have become such by design or as the outcome of a system. There are many faces to this 'design' or 'system'- like capitalism, 'american dream' and such.
Or maybe they aren't stupid and they're simply acting in their own self-interest, which means not wasting their time with unnecessarily more complicated products that offer little to them in return. Or maybe they do want the products they use to be status symbols. Or maybe they simply don't share your point of view.
This doesn't mean they're necessarily stupid, it means they're different from you.
I think spending is an important part of the equation, but calling a broad audience stupid and then asserting that their negative reaction is because they can't accept facts is textbook unconstructive behavior.
It's very easy for us to look at others and identify their behaviour as stupid. I've always tried to assess it as all people are domain stupid, just like all people are domain smart. By this I mean that everyone has their area (or domain) of expertise and of ignorance.
For example, I'd suspect that the majority reading this cannot change the brakes on their car? Perhaps a similar proportion of mechanics can code C++.
Looking at the example in the post - people buying a limited edition $400 Starbucks card for $450: Starbucks is far more than a coffee vendor to those who shop there regularly. When you spend money on things, you become overly attached to those things. As Starbucks overtly sells consumables, there is some dissonance to attachment without a physical manifestation. So with the limited edition gift card, I am able to focus my attachment on a physical object.
The additional genius of this move was to make the card $450. They could have also made a $25 card with $20 credit but the high price of both the card and the premium meant that people felt that it was a better representation of their attachment to Starbucks.
Or maybe this is the root cause? Seems like these stupidity concentrators would just yieldorw stupidity and make their consumers stupider, feeding back into more concentration of stupidity, etc.
What's stupid is people thinking that someone who successfully rules over some of the most influential companies in the world is stupid. Reminds me of all those people who claim that Trump or Putin[1] are "stupid" where in reality they just mean "I don't like them".
[1] You can be a murderous dictator and not stupid, I would actually wager a guess that those people tend to actually be cleverer than average. Some applies to blood-thirsty CEOs.
100yr ago eugenics proponents were saying the same thing while bemoaning societies unwillingness to fully embrace their solutions. 180yr ago people who wanted to build heavy industry were making the same complaints bemoaning insufficient investment. And so on and so on.
~7 billion people aren't stupid. They just don't share your prioritization of whatever the societal issues you perceive to be most important today are. This trope is just a back handed way to call everyone who doesn't agree with you stupid, or some variation thereof.
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