Easily manipulated?

[Love Zhaoying]

6 hours ago, Paul Hexem said:

Products that people buy like security systems or inspection protection? Parcel or region bans for dubious reasons?

How do you mean that these products "manipulate" people? Or, do you just mean people are manipulated, "scared" into buying them? (Trying to imagine if Phil does that to sell Orbs!)

[Persephone Emerald]

40 minutes ago, Istelathis said:

Some derails are, especially if they are pursued for long.  But a gentle derail, should not close a thread down but might instead actually prolong it as people might stop taking it as seriously, and stop their arguing with one another.  More of a nudge, a bump into the train, than throwing a lever and switching the train to an unfinished portion of track.  I might imagine much to the dismay of the person who just wanted to see people argue with one another (not aimed at @Paul Hexem )

More often I see a bump off the platform and onto the third rail.

[Love Zhaoying]

4 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

Besides which, there's nothing to say that mods need to have a report before they can act on a potential problem. 

Speaking of, I've seen a disturbing trend lately where certain posters "page" Moles, apparently rather than creating a report. Very manipulative.

[Paul Hexem]

1 minute ago, Love Zhaoying said:

How do you mean that these products "manipulate" people? Or, do you just mean people are manipulated, "scared" into buying them? (Trying to imagine if Phil does that to sell Orbs!)

They convince their customers to give them money on something that doesn't work (at best, in some cases does much worse). That's pretty textbook manipulation.

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, Paul Hexem said:

They convince their customers to give them money on something that doesn't work (at best, in some cases does much worse). That's pretty textbook manipulation.

Ok, then TIL. 

[Persephone Emerald]

13 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

How do you mean that these products "manipulate" people? Or, do you just mean people are manipulated, "scared" into buying them? (Trying to imagine if Phil does that to sell Orbs!)

Some people seem to start threads or post to threads to advertise their products - eg. security orbs, sex bots. Some post threads to advertise land for sale. Some post threads to advertise roleplay sims, clubs or support groups. That's all advertising.

 

[Katherine Heartsong]

2 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I will say this: Many of y'all have "manipulated" me into liking you, with your kind words and interesting discussions. I'm not complaining!

 

Awwwws ... what's not to love?

[Qie Niangao]

I don't think advertising is necessarily manipulation. Maybe if it inspires a cult. Sneakerheads, Swifties, early iPhone adopters, those are pretty cult-like. Maybe Taylor Swift is more an organized religion than a cult.

In SL, adfarming illustrated the distinction between advertising and real manipulation. The microparcels pretended to be about advertising, but their whole point was to manipulate neighboring landowners into buying at absurd prices to get rid of them. Even if the advertising had been effective (and only a few of the dimmer Lindens purported to believe that), it lacked the manipulative coercion of microparcel extortion.

But advertising? I guess it's manipulative, at least to the extent it instills FOMO.

[Ayashe Ninetails]

5 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

I don't think advertising is necessarily manipulation. Maybe if it inspires a cult. Sneakerheads, Swifties, early iPhone adopters, those are pretty cult-like. Maybe Taylor Swift is more an organized religion than a cult.

It's definitely manipulative. In SL, it'd take the obvious form of using Photoshop and external 3D renders to show off products that look far better than we'd ever be able to get them to look in-world. I'm not overly bothered by that since I kind of know by now which stores have products that can match up with their ads and which ones don't, but...

In the real world, though, I didn't really think about it much (seeing as how Photoshop in advertising - especially in the beauty and fashion industries - is so obnoxiously common anyway) UNTIL I became curious about food styling and the behind-the-scenes of getting food on blogs and in commercials and restaurant ads to look SO delicious. I made the mistake of watching a bunch of food styling/photography videos on YouTube.

Ya wanna know how it's done? This is how it's done... 🤢

 

Ok I don't know if that second photo is actually true. 😂 I didn't see anyone go THAT far, but...I wouldn't be surprised, lol.

Manipulation in advertising? Yeah, a bit!

[Silent Mistwalker]

People try to manipulate me every day in RL and SL. Nothing new there. They usually find out pretty quickly I'm not so easy to manipulate. I'm not as vulnerable as they think.

[Rowan Amore]

2 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I fear that this thread may get reported, as those who make their SL "living" (business, income, etc.) from "helping" may be rightly offended.

 

FIFY 😁

19 minutes ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

It's definitely manipulative. In SL, it'd take the obvious form of using Photoshop and external 3D renders to show off products that look far better than we'd ever be able to get them to look in-world. I'm not overly bothered by that since I kind of know by now which stores have products that can match up with their ads and which ones don't, but...

In the real world, though, I didn't really think about it much (seeing as how Photoshop in advertising - especially in the beauty and fashion industries - is so obnoxiously common anyway) UNTIL I became curious about food styling and the behind-the-scenes of getting food on blogs and in commercials and restaurant ads to look SO delicious. I made the mistake of watching a bunch of food styling/photography videos on YouTube.

Ya wanna know how it's done? This is how it's done... 🤢

 

Ok I don't know if that second photo is actually true. 😂 I didn't see anyone go THAT far, but...I wouldn't be surprised, lol.

Manipulation in advertising? Yeah, a bit!

Just heard about a guy suing Arbys because his sammich didn't look like the one in the advertisement.   🙄

[Love Zhaoying]

4 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

2 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I fear that this thread may get reported, as those who make their SL "living" (business, income, etc.) from "helping" may be rightly offended.

 

FIFY 😁

"Hey, sister! Help a brother out?"

* beams proudly *

[Ayashe Ninetails]

6 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Just heard about a guy suing Arbys because his sammich didn't look like the one in the advertisement.   🙄

Lol. That's exactly why I started digging into all that. Just remembering all the sad-looking food I've received over the years and how hobby bloggers always had these gorgeous table spreads. Ok, I need to learn some of these secrets!

Immediate regret! I knew food got touched up, but I wasn't prepared for all that. People going full Bob Ross on a damn salad. 😂 

At least SL's ads aren't anywhere near as fake as that.

[Lysistrata Szapira]

Since we're coming up on that season, I'd say LL manipulates many of us to play the Great Halloween Pumpkin Candy Bucket Search (tm) game every year.   They dangle lovely, limited addition carro...er...Halloween bears so that we spend hours upon hours hunting down those pesky buckets, getting kicked out by 1 second security orbs (or worse, getting kicked out by 20 second orbs on parcels where the bucket has been placed so far away from the parcel edge that it's impossible to grab), etc.

LL is really good at playing on FOMO.   I've enjoyed playing the game, but I'm having major surgery next week, and I simply don't know if I will recover enough to hunt pumpkins when/if the Game of Buckets begins again. 

[Ceka Cianci]

1 hour ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

Lol. That's exactly why I started digging into all that. Just remembering all the sad-looking food I've received over the years and how hobby bloggers always had these gorgeous table spreads. Ok, I need to learn some of these secrets!

Immediate regret! I knew food got touched up, but I wasn't prepared for all that. People going full Bob Ross on a damn salad. 😂 

At least SL's ads aren't anywhere near as fake as that.

They use stuff like Elmers glue on cereal, but that's a really old one that a lot of people knew already..

I found a video on that kind of stuff..

But if you think this is bad.. The food itself in stores is even more manipulated than the advertisements..

 

Edited September 19, 2023 by Ceka Cianci

[Akane Nacht]

16 hours ago, Paul Hexem said:

I was recently thinking about how easily people are manipulated and if there are SL specific examples. What are some ways you see people in SL easily manipulated?

Literally everyone who has had their password phished?

and then say they were "hacked"..(perhaps this part should be in the peeve thread 😛) 

[UnilWay SpiritWeaver]

Do you have any thoughts, opinions, or preferences on anything? Congratulations you've been manipulated.

The more fervently people believe they have NOT been, the more intensely they have.

It's a bit like how do you find the stupidest people in a room? Ask the geniuses to raise their hands - those are your idiots. How do you find out who's most likely wrong on a deep topic? Ask who knows they are right - those folks don't know jack.

People who don't self question are easy marks.

 

[Qie Niangao]

This thread fills my head with a word cloud of "manipulation", "persuasion", "FOMO", "dog-whistles", "peer pressure", "propaganda", "advertising", "religion", and "coercion" all swirling about, seeming in need of a coherent structure that relates them, but any such structure completely eludes me. So I'll throw another in the mix, somewhere near the "forums" tag: "social media".

In some ways, both these forums and SL itself are only distantly related to social media, but some of the same factors might be relevant.

I'm also reminded of this strange little essay from back in April, "The sapient paradox: With brains like ours, why did prehistoric humans wait millennia to start civilization? / One hypothesis: 'gossip traps.'" The spooky conclusion speculates that social media is driving us back to caveman ways of thinking:

Quote

The basic idea is that social media is resurrecting “our innate form of government,” which is raw social power. Social media is able to do this because it facilitates the transmission of gossip like no other technology has before, enabling virtually anyone to gossip about anyone else. This echoes the nature of humanity’s small-group beginnings.

“One obvious sign you’re living in a gossip trap is when the primary mode of dispute resolution becomes social pressure,” he writes in his essay. “And almost everywhere you look lately, it’s like social media is wearing a skin suit made of our laws, institutions, and governments. Does it not feel, just in the past decade, as if raw social power has outstripped anything resembling formal power?”

 

Edited September 20, 2023 by Qie Niangao
ONLY distantly related

[Luna Bliss]

7 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

I'm also reminded of this strange little essay from back in April, "The sapient paradox: With brains like ours, why did prehistoric humans wait millennia to start civilization? / One hypothesis: 'gossip traps.'" The spooky conclusion speculates that social media is driving us back to caveman ways of thinking:

I'm reading this...looks very interesting..

[Luna Bliss]

10 hours ago, UnilWay SpiritWeaver said:

Do you have any thoughts, opinions, or preferences on anything? Congratulations you've been manipulated.

The more fervently people believe they have NOT been, the more intensely they have.

It's a bit like how do you find the stupidest people in a room? Ask the geniuses to raise their hands - those are your idiots. How do you find out who's most likely wrong on a deep topic? Ask who knows they are right - those folks don't know jack.

People who don't self question are easy marks.

 

It amazes me how some people don't even believe they have a subconscious mind...it's very disconcerting. They are so overly-individualistic they believe nothing has ever affected them. They believe they're in total control.

[Love Zhaoying]

Unpopular opinion: Anyone upset by this thread is easily manipulated!

[Garnet Psaltery]

18 hours ago, Lysistrata Szapira said:

Since we're coming up on that season, I'd say LL manipulates many of us to play the Great Halloween Pumpkin Candy Bucket Search (tm) game every year.   They dangle lovely, limited addition carro...er...Halloween bears so that we spend hours upon hours hunting down those pesky buckets, getting kicked out by 1 second security orbs (or worse, getting kicked out by 20 second orbs on parcels where the bucket has been placed so far away from the parcel edge that it's impossible to grab), etc.

LL is really good at playing on FOMO.   I've enjoyed playing the game, but I'm having major surgery next week, and I simply don't know if I will recover enough to hunt pumpkins when/if the Game of Buckets begins again. 

I hope your surgery goes well next week, and I've sent up a Tiny prayer for you.

[Paul Hexem]

2 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Unpopular opinion: Anyone upset by this thread is easily manipulated!

There were a couple early on, but they were removed pretty quickly.

[Love Zhaoying]

7 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

This thread fills my head with a word cloud of "manipulation", "persuasion", "FOMO", "dog-whistles", "peer pressure", "propaganda", "advertising", "religion", and "coercion" all swirling about, seeming in need of a coherent structure that relates them, but any such structure completely eludes me. So I'll throw another in the mix, somewhere near the "forums" tag: "social media".

When I was a cub, we only had to worry about subliminal messages!

(Naked people and/or phalluses hidden in Disney art, overly sexualized commercials, things like this.)

Now, we've got a veritable smorgasbord of things to look out for!

Note: In the "Underwood Deviled Ham" commercial, Mason Reese says "Borgashmord", but the auto-generated closed-captioning says, "bullish board".

 

[Luna Bliss]

Sadly many are manipulated by the likes of Twitter, and then see the rest of the world with Twitter-eyes.