14 DAY TRIAL // Just days ago, the news broke that, together with a team of scientists, Facebook had run a little experiment intended to determine whether or not it could be possible to transfer a specific state of mind via emotional contagion.
The experiment was carried out a couple of years ago and boiled down to figuring out how one individual or another's emotional state, as expressed via Facebook posts, influenced other users of the social networking service.
The news about Facebook's involvement in this experiment, throughout whose duration users' emotional states were basically manipulated by changing the algorithm used to place posts ever so slightly, is still making headlines.
What's more, chances are it will be at least a few more weeks before the entire affair becomes water under the bridge, Facebook's manipulative ways are forgotten (but probably not forgiven), and everybody goes back to business as usual.
What I find interesting and quite ironic is that, as badly as folks have reacted to the news about this little experiment, there are plenty other cases of manipulation in this day and age that nobody is crying “foul” about.
This is despite the fact that, unlike Facebook's one-week experiment, the cases on manipulation I'm thinking about are everyday occurrences. One can only assume these other instances of toying with folks' minds are yet to become subject to criticism because people aren't even aware of their existence.
Without further ado, here are three examples of everyday manipulation nobody is complaining about these days, but everybody probably should.
Media Manipulation
So you think the media is reliable and trustworthy? That's nice. The only problem (and I hate to break this to you) is that, for the most part, this isn't true. Granted, there was a time when media outlets actually made news. However, this is no longer the case.
On the contrary, the media now shapes pretty much everything we read, hear, or watch. Simply put, news has become too vulnerable and a pretty much defenseless subject to exaggeration or maybe simplification. In the more extreme cases, it's distortion and fabrication that we are dealing with.
You are more than welcome not to agree with me on this one, but I for one blame the rise of the Internet for the fact that the media has lost its reliability. Simply put, it's no longer about informing people, it's about getting them to read things.
It does not even matter whether these things are true or make-believe. One well-placed rumor here, one catchy title there, and folks will click on one alleged piece of news or another until their finger falls off or their brain is so anesthetized by the lack of actual information it shuts down, whichever comes first.
Call me crazy, but it seems to me that, for some reason, the media has very much moved from being a means to deliver information to the public to being a means of entertainment. The better the entertainment, the more money the people behind it make and the more is invested in keeping the cycle going.
“Getting it right is expensive, getting it first is cheap,” Michael Arrington, founder of popular blog TechCrunch, said. Simply put: never mind extensive research to make sure you get the right info, just make sure that, when a story emerges, it's your website that will run it first and attract the most readers.
If you haven't quite figured out where I'm going with this, what I mean to say is that, unfortunately, too many media outlets in this day and age are bending over backwards not to inform you, but to get your attention, which they later gladly sell to advertisers.
So, basically, you might be thinking that you're keeping in touch with what is happening around the world, but what is actually happening is that you are being tricked into clicking and clicking for the benefit of the folks calling the shots. And this, my friends, is manipulation.
Mind you, I'm not saying you should just drop reading anything online, move to the woods, and have news carved in tree bark delivered to you by whichever fuzzy squirrel or rabbit Snow White's seven dwarfs can spare for a few minutes. I'm just saying that, since you are playing the game, you might as well wake up and smell the rules.
Marketing Manipulation
Chances are some part of you is well aware of and has already come to terms with what I am about to say, but I'll go ahead and type it anyways: you are very much wrong if you think the advertising industry promotes actual things you can actually buy.
This might come as a bit of a surprise to your conscious mind, yet I consider it my responsibility to let you in on a teeny tiny secret. In a nutshell, the secret I have in mind is that, rather than things, what is being advertised in magazines, newspapers, and on TV is one lifestyle or another.
Once again, you are more than welcome to disagree, but, as far as I'm concerned, people aren't as interested in owning one object or another as they are in feeling good about themselves and at ease with the world. It's this urge that marketing agencies use to their advantage when designing campaigns.
What I mean is that, if you pay close attention, you will notice that most ads and commercials focus on how, after buying one thing or another, your life will completely turn around and honey will start dripping down your walls and rainbows will magically appear right in front of your bedroom window.
OK, I might be exaggerating a bit. What I mean to say is that, contrary to what I've seen folks doing in commercials, I myself have not yet felt the need to sing and dance when opening a can of soda. And when I do take a shower, I don't do it with a peculiarly big smile on my face, as do the women advertising shower gels.
Simply put, marketing campaigns more often than not fail to advertise a product, but instead advertise an experience that that one product will supposedly offer people. It is this experience that folks find appealing and go chasing after armed with nothing but their credit cards. Unfortunately, things never play out as they do on TV or in ads.
Then again, marketing is all about boosting business and increasing sales, and, since money is involved, it really should not come as such a big surprise that, more often than not, common decency goes out the window and manipulation is the order of the day.
The last example of manipulation that I would very much like to bring to your attention is the one carried out by politicians. Specifically, what I wish to discuss is how, every once in a while, politicians turn to fear to get people to support one policy or another or simply not have any reaction at all.
In politics, manipulation boils down to exercising the right influence to get people to do things they otherwise would not even consider doing. Just to set the record straight, political manipulation is very much different to using power to boss people around and to sanctioning them if they do not do as told.
Thus, as is the case with marketing manipulation, the political one is all about convincing one individual or another to do something that you want them to do without actually asking them to do it. Simply put, your target must never feel external compulsion.
On the contrary, it too often happens that those who are victims of political manipulation are very much convinced that they are choosing to behave in one way or another on their own accord, and that it is they who are calling the shots. Needless to say, this is not really the case.
In a paper published in the American Journal of Political Sciences several years ago, researchers showed that, when looking to manipulate people, politicians more often than not turn to fear. Thus, they convince people that a threat is looming or that trouble is just around the corner and then wait for them to react.
Take wars, for example. No people in their right minds would go chasing after others whose heads are equally well attached to their shoulders and whose brains are also wired in all the right ways if not told that, unless they do so, great harm will come to them and their families.
The common people don't want war. They just want to go on living their lives, not bothering and not being bothered by anybody. However, when told that things might get really messy unless they take action, they will jump at the chance to secure and safeguard the very peace that they will lose when enrolling.
And it's not just about convincing people to go to war and put themselves in danger while looking to keep themselves safe. Take the Patriot Act, which was first signed by George W. Bush in 2001 and then amended by Barack Obama in 2011, and which severely limits the average citizen's right to privacy.
Prior to September 11, 2001, nobody would have approved of such an act. Still, the moment they felt their personal security threatened, the majority of people in the United States jumped at the chance to let folks calling the shots snoop around their lives, just as long as they promised to keep them safe.
So there you have it, three examples of everyday manipulation that more often than not go unnoticed, even though they shape the reality we live in way more than Facebook's little experiment did.
As already mentioned, what the social networking site did is just the tip of the iceberg. Just look down, and you'll surely see a ginormous block of ice casually floating about just below the surface, neatly hidden from view.