I came across middle-agers on the fine summery fiery street walk of a manhattan space-scape and listened as they lowed, “it’s a shell game, oh whoa, gel shame”. Given a choice, the easiest choice of all (one with two options), they froze: who should regulate the web advertising networks’ use of private and personal information on the Internet, the Industry Itself or the Government. Betwixt, a populace stands infirm.
, petrified turd.
In the triforce of Consumer, Industry, and Government, it’s hard to find an equilibrium in ye olde seesaw: the more successful an advertising firm wants to be, the less liberty a consumer has; this is the result of an ad networks’ sorting and filtering personal internet habits to create said premium product: the highly targeted ads which are the result of all this data mining. A bad example comes to mind in that the more I know of my roommates drug-sniffing habits, the more I can successfully market my cocaine/meth/powdered foreskin to him. While it’s not fair to say that advertisers are trying to sell products that consumers are literally addicted to (one cuts the foreskin powder with Newport tobacco to increase the cravings), it should be understood that corporations do not have in mind the easy to dismiss notion of a “public good”.
It is too easy for a cynic with his fingers in someone else’s shorts to claim that the government has no time for the public good, but this thinking must be destroyed. For these people, a trip to the libertarian paradise of central Africa might rape them into clarity. For the rest of us, it must be understood that our government functions quite well for what it is and the onus is on our anus to follow the News-ous.
Necessarily, we must understand the tendency for folks to support Industry over Government: industry is rarely held accountable for blatant fuckery, whereas government officials are easily identified and thus excoriated for whatever (see: Politics). It seems as though there’s a psychological slip in play when politicians are routinely singled out, face and name all over for their role in trysts and bribery, whereas businessmen in the exact same situation are as blameless as the Islamic man who rapes a woman for leaving the house without covering her head, condoned by a community as tsk tsk what a dumb broad indeed (see: Predatory Lending).
When industry folks begin to believe their actions as for the benefit of the consumer, a problem of continuity ensues. I agree that the industry should self-regulate, but it shouldn’t be under the guise of well-meaning buffoonery. Just as Google’s motto states “do no evil”, this ought to be followed up by a detailed explanation that for all the “evil” a cynic makes of their business practices, they are actually benefiting quite a group of folks - all while making a pretty penny. Nobody should feel guilty about making money while claiming a noble carrot, but they oughtn’t believe it! But too many folks do believe it, and I believe that this misbelief can lead to (deep waters enter...) a crisis in self-realization and “a life well-lived” (http://www.aei.org/speech/100023). Ugh, too much?
This and other points will be explored in a continuing series of short pieces I call “Reality Through Chicanery: The Princess Feels the Pea, Confronts it and Rejoices”
