Branding is for Cattle

I'm beginning to figure out this online marketing thing.  As in, I've been taken in by online marketing and I've started to notice.  I'm not talking about pop ups and banners that seems to know where I online shop.  I'm talking about the subtler advertising that masquerades as knowledge.  I feel like I have caught a glimpse of the Wizard behind the curtain and he's pulling on all the levers with gusto.  If you've ever clicked on an internet article titled anything like, "Three surprising facts about being a human that will shock you!" you've fallen for it as well.  Or maybe it was "Nine things that men wish women knew about them."  I don't want to be uninformed… So I bite, like a fish on bait and inevitably feel the sharp edge of the hook slide through the soft flesh of my mouth.  There is nothing there but the illusion of food.  These 'articles' are the cheap writing of the glossy magazines.  90% advertising space.  10% mediocre content.  They get you to click.  They get you to pull magazine off the rack so that the perfume samples and subscription cards can fall into your hands.

Annoyed, I wrench myself free and go looking backwards for something.  Something real.  Something meaningful.  Food for thought or food for my soul; staring into a million pixels of light and straining to know something.  I couldn't tell you what exactly I'm looking for--but I think I will know it when I see it--it will be something that means something.  Truth--I guess. How I imagine I will find it on some entertainment news site defies explanation, but I keep looking.

"Why you should never eat these three things!"

"Five super foods that will save your life!"

"The secret every nutritionist wants you to know!"

"What the fast food companies are hiding will AMAZE you!"

Click enough--skim enough articles with my rapidly decreasing attention span--and I may just find out the secret of how not to die.

Or maybe the article I clicked on was titled, "20 things that will revolutionize your dating life!" Or, "7 things that women do that drive guys crazy!" I take the bait again because surely I must need to know these things.  Maybe if I knew them I wouldn't feel dissatisfied or rejected.  Maybe it would be the Golden Ticket to a successful relationship.  Maybe if I knew these things that I would not how not to feel lonely.

I might also be drawn to posts about money or success--because, certainly, one could always have more of those things.

"Four words that will take your bank account from zero to hero!"

"12 surprising tricks that all successful people swear by!"

Exclamation! Point!

Promises, promises.  The advice is commonplace.  The 'secrets' obvious and mundane.  The truth of what these articles are selling is much sadder.  (No, not shocking--not revolutionary.)  They are selling a sense of inadequacy.  They are pedlars of the insidiously banal slogan that You Are Not Enough.  You don't know enough. You don't have enough.

Advertising sets about establishing that you are unhappy; then promises the antidote in four easy payments of $19.95 plus shipping and handling (some conditions may apply).  The internet is no different. Social media is about schilling your schtick.  (It's called 'branding' and I doubt the term was coined ironically.)  Like us on Facebook.  Follow us on Twitter.  It probably didn't start out this way but now even YouTube has sold out so that I can't watch a cat video without first watching an ad.  Even more problematic--your friends can advertise to you as well.  I joined Twitter because I read that it was a good thing for a writer to do, but I can't help but feel like I've just walked into a pitchman war where every voice is competing to get me to 'step right up, folks…'.  Buy something.  Do something. Retweet something.  With thousands of these messages on our devices popping up all the time, is it any wonder that we are a culture drowning in stuff and choking on its meaninglessness? I don't need more stuff.  I don't want more advertising noise in my life convincing me that I have problems I didn't know about until a second ago.

Now that I've cottoned on to the hook, I see it everywhere.  Maybe there is an advertising consultant out there who has done the market research and discovered that what with the short attention span of the average internet user, you have got to present the problem and promise the solution in the article title.  Maybe it all started innocently enough but once you see the trick, you feel the manipulation. I want honest interactions.  I want real conversations; true dialogue.  There is something incredible and life-givingly essential about true communication with another human being; shared knowledge and experience.  That is the high of writing.  It can connect you to someone you will probably never meet through a eureka sensation of "Yes, exactly! I thought I was the only one who felt that way."  That is a feeling worth reading for.  That is a feeling worth writing for.

Let's not settle for cheap tricks.  We all want to find something real.  Something beautiful.  Something true that is fulfilling.  We spend so many hours in searching without ever really finding anything except slickly packaged counterfeits and empty promises.  True Beauty is food for the soul and it doesn't cost anything but a willingness to surrender to it.

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