As tabletop games go, @eclipsephase is packed with “uhhh, that makes me feel unsettled” ideas. One of the bits kicking around in its lore is the idea of an “Apple of Knowledge” hack — an idea that infects and parasitizes its hosts, but only if they can understand it.
it’s one of the game’s innumerable existential threats, and it’s particularly nasty because the smarter you are, the higher your risk. If you’re exposed to it, you just can’t help “getting it” — and boom. You’re infected.
I mention this, because over time I’ve begun to think that “marketing” is a similar existential threat.
Not, like, the idea of “telling people about things you make or do, to trade for things they make or do or have that you need.” Rather, the specific shape “marketing” now has.
The parallel tracks of psychology, neuroscience, mass communications, profit motive, and moral-abstraction machines like corporations, have basically evolved into an engine for destroying ourselves at scale, one lifestyle product placement listicle at a time.
It’s easy to say “Yeah! Madison Avenue is a bunch of parasites!” but the problem is basically civilization-level, now. Everything from religion to nutrition to geoscience to political revolution is understood to be engaged in a darwinian fight for brainspace with everything else.
The most dangerous meme isn’t a meme, but the meme of “memes”.