Advertising as a Parasite on the Semantic Commons

post by ThomasMore · 2022-01-28T17:38:36.340Z · LW · GW · 14 comments

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‘Tis the season to be bombarded with adverts for useless crap you don’t need or want. But it's not Christmas you say? Correct: it is always the season to be inundated with adverts. Continuing the tradition [LW · GW] of ad-bashing [LW · GW] on LessWrong, I want to pick up on a particular 'bad of ad': cultural poisoning. 

 

I find ads infuriating and depressing. But not just any ads, the worst offenders are those which start off with some wholesome scene, tugging at the heartstrings, only to transition to selling shoes or a car. Why? I think it’s because they poison our cultural environment. The notion of ‘cultural poisoning’ is, however, a little unclear, and I want to give it some more shape using the concept of the Semantic Commons. 

 

Semantic Commons 

Shared concepts can only suffer so much misuse in a community before their meaning changes. Consider the sad fates of ‘literally’, ‘actually’, ‘in reality’, 'liar’, and ‘girthy.’ These terms have either lost their force; had their meanings altered to something different; or had unpleasant connotations grafted on. Now they are useless for the wider community.^[1]

It seems the frequency; visibility; and vividness of the misuse all contribute to this process. And many times it is deliberate. Take, for example, the strategic expansion of situations considered ‘rape’ for political purposes. Scott Alexander conceptualises this as the semantic commons: the more users ‘take’ from the commons and use a concept to make a point, the more they risk denaturing and diluting its meaning. 

 

Thermodynamics of Cool

Adverts are possibly the heaviest users of the semantic commons. Many (though not all) adverts rely on linking existing terms, concepts, and shared experiences in a community to the products they sell.^[2]They thereby abuse what my father calls the ‘Thermodynamic Laws of Cool.’ Take an advert which shows Ceilidh dancers drinking Coca Cola. Ceilidhs are cool because they are fun, social, sincere cultural events. Coke less obviously so – it’s a sugary drink produced by a multinational conglomerate. Advertising Gurus know Coke seems cooler if it is associated with the spontaneous dancing of the Ceilidh so they make adverts showing Ceilidh dancers drinking Coke. 

 

But the Thermodynamic Laws of Cool suggest the total amount of coolness in a system is constant: for every bit Coke seems cooler, Ceilidhs seem less so. If there are enough vivid adverts linking the two eventually we reach a bland average point where Coke is kind of cool but commercial and Ceilidhs are kind of commercial but cool. And coolness is just one phenomena adverts leech off. Take socialising with friends and family; small acts of kindness; revolution; invention; exploration; gift giving; emotional healing, reconciliation. Similarly political and social movements (Rainbow capitalism) and traditional culture (Christmas Sales). If people like it, advertisers will use it. We inherently sense this abuse of the Commons. Hence why adverts which link the most important parts of life to mundane products are especially frustrating: we sense something is being stolen or abused. 

 

When we say that our culture is ‘poisoned’, I think it is a vague gesture to this kind of theft. The poison is the dilution of otherwise pure or strong feelings, emotions, and memories with unwanted connotations. And because we share the use of concepts with one another, we are often helpless to stop it happening. 

 

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Summary

Adverts are bad: they act parasitically on existing concepts and dilute the strength of their meaning. For now, these negative effects are unavoidable. This is because:

1. Governments have decided adverts are passive providers of information and thus their display is allowed virtually everywhere^[3]
2. Shared communal concepts can have their meaning changed without every individual user taking part; adverts destroying such a meaning can therefore affect you regardless of whether you believe or even know about them

The most we can do is form sub-communities which reject the pervasive effect of adverts. Ultimately, as a collective problem, the solution is a political one. ^[4]

 

1. ^{^}

   Likewise, this can occur for sets of concepts connected to communal practice. Eventually if there is sufficient misuse the discourse dies and the concepts end up referencing nothing. Their use becomes a shell game in social power plays. We could call this the ‘Heat Death of the Cultural Universe.’  

2. ^{^}

   This is the 'emotional inception' model of how adverts work. This article has a different approach, suggesting adverts work by convincing the target that other consumer will probably believe the advert's message, even if the target doesn't. Thus, as a matter of social signalling, buying the product is desirable. This does not seem to explain how targeted adverts can be effective even if the watcher knows it is curated. In any event, the two are not necessarily in tension - both may operate simultaneously. Roughly, the 'inception' model suggests adverts communicate at the second simulacra level [LW · GW]; the article suggests adverts try to get consumers to communicate at that level. 

3. ^{^}

   Further, some people like watching adverts. Consider the viral superbowl ads, the invented tradition of the John lewis advert, and the bizarre phenomenon of Teleshopping. https://repository.uwl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1241/

4. ^{^}

   For a similar argument in the context of data protection, see https://academic.oup.com/jla/article/doi/10.1093/jla/laz005/5578488

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