By the implied reasoning, is marketing an attempt to artificially simulate social pressure? I have questions.
Watching the Black Friday media coverage gives me the familiar feeling of just not getting it. I can see it happening and don’t understand why people accept(?) it. Sure, all hype is manufactured, but when people follow it, it becomes real - to them, anyhow. It’s actually fascinating.
I want to believe that I’m immune from marketing and hype, but I don’t think that can be completely true. Marketing also contributes to brand awareness which would still have an impact on trust when it comes to selecting products that you need. I do however think it’s much more difficult to convince me to buy a thing I don’t need by impulse. Objective reasoning always seems to take over. I don’t seem to be able to buy stuff I don’t need regardless of price. Maybe I’m depriving myself of potential happiness? Maybe I value reasoning above stuff? I don’t know.
Does anyone have any thoughts about what’s happening here?
I think we by default look beyond what’s in front of us and analyze the why and how behind things—both the little things and the big life decisions too. Others tend to take things at face value unless they are pushing themselves or putting in a lot of effort to think through them.
This is really valuable with things like marketing because, by default, we see the intentions behind marketing schemes and the white lies on packaging probably more so than the average person.
It also (for me) can be a downside with the things I just need to get done without analyzing. Even more so with relationships—sometimes I simply need to trust the person in front of me to connect with them, but I often analyze people and their behaviors and intentions to the extreme to create a full “profile” of their good, bad, emotions, and intentions in my head.