okay i just had a bad epiphany but corporate interest’s influence on the internet is going to become so much stronger now that generations that are internet naturalized have grown up and starting working as “social media consultants”. advertising is going to become so much more subtle, manipulate your behavior to a greater extent, and completely pervade every aspect of our lives the more we rely on the internet for everything from entertainment to social validation.
what im saying is its scary that corporate twitter accounts are getting good at twitter. to have the same avenue a human would to express themself. its like, an extreme anthromorphism of a brand, and that brand representing a corporate interest, and successfully passing itself off as a sentient entity on twitter, thats really weird to me.
like this is so fucked up. it doesnt immediately read as an advertisement, conceptually it executes the levels of irony and deconstruction that usually make for successful memes in this genre or whatever. its almost subverting itself, but ultimately it still succeeds as an advertisement. it makes me sick. for every misfire of corporations trying to relate (pepsi protest commercial), theres another company getting better at it
okay but like my thing about this is… who is actually eating at these places because shit like this? yeah it’s funny but i never go to wendy’s because a meme, if i go to wendy’s it’s because i want a gross burger and a frosty, same with taco bell and mcdonald’s and wherever the fuck.
i really think that you’re blowing this out of proportion and having very little faith in people’s ability to decide what they want for themselves. it’s just not that deep.
It’s not about the effectiveness of the ads in question, but their complete omnipresence in every aspect and moment of life, and how bizarre and sophisticated the mechanations of advertising have become. If people don’t call attention to these things, they become normal.
The effectiveness of marketing isnt one-to-one, like, “ad says burger is good, I think burger is good, I eat burger.” That was 50 years ago. Y’all, since then these multi-million dollar corporations have been hiring psychologists and sociologists and anthropologists to study how best to get under consumer skin and theyve figured out it’s not about making you WANT a burger,
It’s about creating a Brand Identity – an anthropomorphized personality that your brain fits into an established schema (system of thought) so it’s easier to just drop into the background of your everyday life. It’s not about making you want a burger, it’s about making it so, when you DO want a burger, the first place you think of is Wendy’s, because their ads have made you think about them five time already that day. And most importantly, it’s about making sure you dont realize how often they make you think about them, so you don’t resent how pervasive they’ve become. They do that by tricking your brain into thinking of them as just another human-like personality. Your Funny Meme Friend Wendy’s. Wine Aunt World Market. Woke Jock Nike. Even your Endearingly Unhip Uncle Geico.
(hey also if you want dozens of terrifying examples of what I mean, just type ‘brand identity schema’ into Google like I just did and take a gander at all those scholarly articles discussing how best to acquire consumers, like we’re a fucking commodity)
one time i said i didn’t like the wendys twitter and got called classist for hating retail employees
this shit works. it makes people like Brands. gets under their skin and in to their minds. when i said i didnt like the wendys twitter i personally offended people that viewed wendys as a friend, that viewed the wendys social media manager as a friendly individual that they respected.
the wendys social media manager is not your friend. they don’t even really exist. there’s no one person that writes the tweets for wendys. there’s a team of 20 something year olds that casually observe the latest meme trends and crank out mspaint memes because they know they’ll get retweeted if the memes are relevant.
they trick you in to thinking that Wendys is a hip friendly young person, and they manipulate you in to thinking that disliking marketing is somehow a “problematic” “un-woke” thing to do.
and it works.
install ublock origin. on mobile, block every promoted tweet you see. don’t let them convince you that this shit is normal.
for the record, ‘not feeling anything’ is a valid and not unusual response to trauma or grief
so if you feel empty and devoid of feeling, it’s not because you’re a cold and uncaring person.
Sometimes, not feeling anything is the only way you can cope.
Be prepared for a delayed reaction, too. It’s very common to be totally calm during a crisis, and then days or weeks (or years) later suddenly get hit with a tidal wave of “HOLY SHIT THAT HAPPENED.”
Sometimes your mind waits until it feels safe to start processing things emotionally. It’s a powerful survival strategy, but it can really blindside you, because just as you start to feel like things are okay, you’re overwhelmed by the realization of how not-okay things were before.
This may not happen, and that’s okay too. But it’s something to watch out for when your initial reaction is numbness.
The very first ARMORY KICKSTARTER pins have come in!! I just posted a kickstarter update to this effect, but they’re slowly flowing in week by week! They’re all coming out beautifully, especially we fight as one, which has super nice glitter that’s unfortunately hard to photograph!!
I’ll have more images next week because I am expecting PATCHES to come in! Yay! I’m so excited to finally work on carding the MOUNTAIN of these!
(If you missed out on pledging, extras will go up once kickstarter fulfillment is basically over.)
with my school teachers it was like “omg they’re so cool i wanna be their friend!” but with university lecturers it’s like “they’re endearing and i love them like cats but are they okay because i think they know too much about 18th century german literature to survive in the world”
what, you can’t know who friedrich schiller is and also change a tire?
literally no
this would have worked better if I personally knew how to change a tire
1. Mongolian dress, Show of Chinese Ethnic Minorities, Hohhot City, China, 2011 2. Mongolian couture 3. Mongolia, Gobi Desert, traditional costumes, photo by Per-Andre Hoffmann 5. Mongolian deel 8-9. Mongolian princess 10. Mongolian queen costume, Museum of Mongolian Costumes in Ulan Bator
Consulting Witch 