Both of mine are songs, but I think it’d be better to expand to any media.
The first is one I complained about in the long past: “Welcome to My Life” by Simple Plan:
This has always struck me as a rather naked attempt to appeal directly to certain youth demographics with certain attitudes. Yeah, all media does it to some extent, but there was just something so raw and obvious about it that it rubs me the wrong way in a sense I’m not quite sure how to express.
To a lesser extent, there’s “What Makes You Beautiful” by One Direction:
Using the self esteem issues of teenage girls and creating parasocial relationships to sell albums just seems…icky to me.
I think that’s a big part of it: both these songs feel to me like they came straight from some marketing group and pretending it’s art.
Am I completely off base here? Any other examples?
Hair loss commercials can only sell by making someone feel insecure or self conscience. At least weight loss has a health benefit. Hygiene is important for health reasons too even if you don’t care what people think. But hair loss is a meaningless issue that needs manipulation to make it a problem that requires a solution. That all the solutions are silly hair stapling or snake oil is just added insult to injury.
Yep, advertising has been creating problems that don’t really exist in order to sell solutions as long as there’s been advertising. I remember in the 80s or early 90s a particularly blatant series of commercials where a guy at a party was trying to talk to women, in the process would discreetly scratch his head, just a quick little scritch, and the women would recoil from him in horror like he had the plaque-- “he must have…dandruff!”
Virtually any fiction involving dogs. Seems like putting a sad dog on screen is all it takes to get people sobbing and it drives me nuts. I don’t lack empathy for dogs. I love furballs of all kinds, but…jesus, are most people such soft touches that you can literally put no work into it?
(The Seymour Asses episode of Futurama, I’m looking at you.)
Lots of ads are blatant and on the spectrum from dubious to wrong. Skin lightening creams that encourage demeaning attitudes. Skin tightening creams that do nothing. Frightening people with unneeded treatments for minimal problems. Ring around the collar! Dishpan hands. Ass-No-Smell (as parodied on SNL).
First thing I thought of was Russia Today. They exist to point out every flaw of the Western countries and glorify everything Russian while complaining how unfair the West is to them. They look like a news network but are I believe basically run by the Russian government. The weirdest thing is PBS used to broadcast RT every day, I suppose as an effort to broaden the horizons of Americans. But did the people making decisions at PBS realize it was just pure propaganda?
