TechTakes

In the spirit of rationalism I’m going to invent terminology for something that probably already has better terminology, and spout a bunch of unsubstantiated stuff. Ads would be fine if advertising campaigns were zeroth order only, by which i mean, purely to publicise products with no effort to “sell” you on something. First order they try convince you to buy something, without lying. Second order is where they begin lying by omission, third order is when they begin outright lying. Higher orders are increasingly kafkaesque/dystopian. E.g.:

• any publicity stunt
• Influencing ideas about identity to sell a product, i.e. real men eat meat, dolls are for girls, etc.
• manipulating your personal ethics to launder the ethics of a company, e.g. an oil company urging an individual to go green so that the oil company doesn’t have to
• legal racketeering, i.e. lobbying for regulatory measures that force people to buy something
• any participation in a political campaign

The list goes on. As advertising has continued and the profession has been refined, the overton window of what was considered in good taste has shifted to include these increasingly perverse strategems.

Everything big tech has done with advertising just adds to the list. They’ve broken the window completely. To use a term from our old pal Yud, the “inscrutable matrices” that make up their personalisation algorithms might show you more relevant content alongside ads, but they will also trigger a positive feedback loop radicalising you into one ideology or another. See: facebook q-pilling middle america.