How They Reach You

The authors of media messages know that to reach the ultimate consumers--us--they need to sway the circle of influences that surround us. They target the significant people in our lives—spouses, bosses, friends, and indirectly pressure them to pressure us toward buying their products by promising to draw us closer. They dangle the promise of personal fulfillment and fuller relationships.

Their techniques vary, depending on the portion of our world they are aiming at.
For example, to influence the spouse, the makers of messages employ psychological research and focus groups, seeking to tap the hidden desire of e.g. the wife to have a more romantic husband. The age group of women who would buy Old Spice for their men trends toward Boomers and the next wave after them, so a model is chosen—Fabio—who appeals to the middle-aged woman's fantasy:

“If I buy this for my husband, he will become my dream hunk and we will be closer.”

The advertisers also try to appeal to the wife’s desire to be seen as irresistible, so someone like Elizabeth Taylor sells “White Shoulders” to the mature woman, appearing in soft-focus and gauzy, muted-tone fabrics.

To reach the white-collar worker, and load him up with various cybernetic products, the advertisers first sell his employer on the desirability of developing in-house cottage industry. They sell the Boss on the promised lower overhead of the “work anywhere” office model. Then they sell the general public on the “freedom” and the "connectivity" of being able to do business anywhere, anytime, from a laptop or Smartphone via Skype, the Cloud, or whatever conferencing scheme or service is their client. Employer then pressures peon to “get with the program” (and thereby remove another cost center from Company books), and Voila! The new Company man is sold as an entrepreneur (i.e. you're the one who will be taking all the risks while enriching the corporation that bought into the model).The Company gets more from the worker, and the worker thinks he is getting more from the company.

Meanwhile, the savvy advertisers sell us an idealized image of all-inclusiveness by using attractive multi-racial, multi-ethnic models in an ideal interactive environment absent glitches and dropouts of service due to sunspots, electric outages and electromagnetic noise from power lines or dead spots. Also, this is an imaginary environment because it ignores the necessity of getting along with real people. Whatever sense of connection you can draw through the ethernet is unsatisfying to your real need for human contact.

To build a false sense of social connection, and to continue to sell their services, therefore, the purveyors of Cyberworld offer addictive activities like online poker, Farmville, YouTube and other “virtual” relationships—all mediated through their paid channels. Either they collect subscriptions, or they sell you--the user--to advertisers; or they do both! If you really love your distant relatives,you are told, you need to do your social intimacy via virtual conferencing on satellite or VoIP hookups.

Meanwhile, actual physical relationships are being outmoded. Society pays a price: people--who are texting while driving or running trains off tracks, who are checking online while flying planes,or while crossing streets--are being killed or maimed in increasing numbers. Many an anesthetized i-pod or Nano wearer is obliviously involved in the electronic toys while ignoring people at the same table. Flash mobs, who have no context or commonality except boredom and the cyber links they share, are congregating in mindless mobs to do mindless things, oblivious of the real hurt or inconvenience they are causing to real people. They seem strangely disconnected from reality, as if it all is just a more vivid version of some video game.

The pitch is: "If your friends and Family would just join your Plan, everyone would love you." You can download cool music and be cool, hip and connected. “Hooking up” is so easy to do! Nirvana is just a click away! Like a drug.

The problem is, that people who seek validation through a "virtual" relationship miss the virtues of "reality" relationships. Perhaps those who play on our vulnerabilities and our sense of low self-esteem in an increasingly complex world are only exacerbating the alienation that drew us to their product in the first place. Seeking a panacea for our loneliness, we are tempted into buying nostrums that only increase our alienation. Truly, the cure may also too often prove to be the disease.