Verily I say unto thee, that Johan Lindquist spake thusly:
> What I have been "advising" all along is that people should learn to
> take advertising for what it is
But to repeat my earlier points:
1. This /particular/ example of advertising is masked as something else
(an impartial recommendation), and is thus deceptive. This is *not*
"just advertising".
If this /is/ typical of advertising practices outside the UK (e.g. in
the US or Australia) then I pity the consumers in those countries, and
sincerely hope the respective governments eventually adopt advertising
regulations as good as ours, to protect consumers from this form of abuse.
Perhaps this "apathy" I referred to is not uniquely yours, but is
endemic in a culture which has become institutionalised by the ideology
that business (or anything pertaining to money) has superior /rights/
over people themselves, perpetuating the twisted doctrines of the
"right" to force people to view adverts (ref: Tivo; Danny Carlton; and
others); the "right" to profit from business (the pro Intellectual
Monopoly lobby); and the "right" to use /any/ means, deceptive or
otherwise, to brainwash consumers into buying their products and services.
Business is an /opportunity/, not a "right".
Those who overstep the boundaries of moral acceptability in their
desperate and obsessive scramble for even higher profits, by exploiting
the weak and/or violating consumers' rights, need to be regulated and
punished.
If you don't see that need, then consider the possibility that you may
have succumbed to that marketing indoctrination, and are now part of
that institutionalised culture of consumers groomed to think and act
exactly as the advertisers planned. IOW you've been programmed to accept
abuse without question. A similar phenomenon occurs in cases of domestic
violence. And no, I'm not being facetious, you should really examine
this form of manipulation in more detail; you might be surprised what
you discover about yourself.
2. Even if (as is falsely implied by the vendor - due to a lack of any
explicit details marking this as a paid advertisement) this /were/ an
impartial recommendation (even coincidentally so), in at least one
case it has been shown to be a lie (Lenovo), and is thus not only a
deceptive use of advertising, but also a false claim.
You seem to have adopted the attitude that advertising is universally
understood to be a lie, and that this is therefore an acceptable
condition (par for the course). You've also apparently become
conditioned to accept that paid advertising may be an inherent part of
culture, built into its foundations in such a way as to blur the
distinction between impartiality and paid endorsement, and that
therefore everything you see and hear (from whatever source) is probably
a form of advertisement - and furthermore that this is /also/ an
acceptable condition. The conclusion is therefore that you've accepted
that everything in your culture is essentially a lie; synthetic and
false ... much like living in Hollywood.
Some of that may be true, to an extent - and depending on location, but
your resigned acceptance of it is a rather unhealthy condition.
3, It is not our responsibility as consumers to "take" deceptive and
false advertising ... at all ... ever ... period. It is (or /should/
be) the obligation of advertisers to act responsibly and ethically,
and when they fail to do so, the responsibility of advertising
standards regulators to take remedial action against such violators.
I'm not excusing stupidity or naivety (but then those who suffer those
conditions are not really in a position to do anything about it, are
they?), but it's totally unacceptable to pass the onus of responsibility
(for a crime or breach of other type of regulation) from the perpetrator
to the victim. Indeed it's selfish, uncharitable and malevolent to
expect /anyone/ to simple "deal" with crime, rather than instigate and
support laws and other regulations to /prevent/ that crime in the first
place, or punish the perpetrators after the fact.
Deceitful manipulation is /not/ acceptable; advertising /should/ be
conducted ethically; and we /need/ laws and regulatory bodies to enforce
good behaviour from the marketing industry. Microsoft and their
"partners" are a perfect example of exactly /why/ this is absolutely
necessary, because they act with gross immorality and malevolence; they
are deceitful and manipulative; they have the mentality of thugs, and
they should not be allowed to conduct themselves in such a fashion with
complete impunity.
--
K.
http://slated.org
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| "At the time, I thought C was the most elegant language and Java
| the most practical one. That point of view lasted for maybe two
| weeks after initial exposure to Lisp." ~ Constantine Vetoshev
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Fedora release 8 (Werewolf) on sky, running kernel 2.6.25.11-60.fc8
19:22:59 up 34 days, 3:05, 2 users, load average: 0.02, 0.09, 0.05
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