There once was a time when a certain sect of AdTech looked the marketing industry dead in the eye and claimed that a new “social contract” between consumers and marketers was emerging. Some even called it Brand Love. It went something like this – Consumers owed it to marketers to pay attention to their ads in return for the content those ads funded. Furthermore, consumers would reward Marketers who acted as custodians of global wellbeing with their loyalty. During the time it took for us to work our way through that highfalutin nonsense, BOTH Consumers AND Marketers got hooked on the very social technology that concocted the narrative. Now that everyone knows they are being watched, recorded, tracked and traded in the human futures market, the bigger problem is they don’t care. The habit is too hard to kick.
It’s kind of like the Marlboro Man, only instead of a dangerous product using Media to market itself as something that it wasn’t to consumers, it’s a dangerous Medium marketing itself as something it’s not to advertisers and consumers. Marlboro Man was a lie that airbrushed cancer with coolness. (Marlboro didn’t earn the nickname ‘Cowboy Killers’ for nothing. Five men who appeared in Marlboro-related advertisements, all died of smoking-related diseases). Social Media was to be the great connector, but instead is responsible for deteriorating the mental health of teenagers, poisoning political debate and acting as a forum for bad actors (not you Gal Godot).
We now know how bad it is; how our current modes of communication dignify irrelevance and amplify nonsense. But do we care? As Aldous Huxley grasped, it is not necessary to conceal anything from a public narcoticized by technological diversions.
There’ s no need to be forced to march towards oblivion when we happily Tweet, Post, swipe and Tik-tok Dance our way into it…
