So many people that take psychology courses end up working in the advertisement industry because that’s where the jobs are if you have a psychology degree. Very few people sit back and think about the implications of the scientific study of the mind being used by companies to distort peoples perceptions and make them buy things.
They are literally trying to control our minds. It’s not a conspiracy theory this is out in the open public information. If some companies decided to they can make you depressed to sell more things to you and you wouldn’t even know it.
Imagine the pick a teenage boy. This boy is a bit shy and insecure. Now, psychology was originally intended to help people. Under the capitalist model it doesn’t. Now this teenage boy instead of being recommended stuff to help them will instead be recommended the likes of Andrew Tate and so on. This person won’t even know what hit them and won’t even understand the turn of events that will lead to those videos being recommended. But they are recommended to him. Suddenly his change in behaviour pushes people away and he falls deeper and deeper into a rabbit hole.
They get more depressed. More lonely so they start buying shit like AI girlfriends but they aren’t real. They get recommended more hateful content as well. They will sprial deeper into depression. This person will likely seek help at this point. Perhaps they’ll recommend putting effort into real world connections so they download something like tinder. But all these apps are designed to make you pay in order to succeed so he pays to get special access. Now the ad companies know they’ll loose money if this now grown man becomes confident so they start recommending content that’ll make them more anxious and depressed about the experience. They give up and retreat further into depression. The whole time the person who is being targeted, their family, their therapist and their loved ones will never be able to put the dots together. They’ll wonder what went wrong not knowing that their personality was already decided for them by ad companies years ago.
So like that they add companies weaponising human psychology can target a teenage boy and basically plan out the next ten years of their life. Think about how dystopian the weaponisation of psychology is when a family member of yours goes down the alt right pipeline after “suddenly” being recommended such videos.
That’s exactly where I wanted to work, but before you hate, I wanted to get into advertising because I didn’t like what I saw and thought I could do better. I got the degrees, took the psych classes, and set off to change the world for the better. Nobody hired me.
You can’t buy what you don’t know exists, and there are some awesome things out there. But being hammered by messages or propaganda is lazy and abusive; I don’t put up with it.
So yeah, I’m an wannabe advertiser turned massive ad blocker/privacy supporter. Screw the industry.
I saw a lot of my own experience in your comment, and wanted to add a bit of my story. I work in web development, and years ago I was tasked with learning Google Ads so we could start offering it as a service to clients. So exciting at first, learning the ins and outs of such a powerful platform – But in practice, it was a cynical and dehumanizing experience. Dissecting thousands of real human beings’ search phrases for some untapped keyword, in an effort to cash in on their weakest moments. Not what I got into this field to do, either.