Ad Fed Brains, And Other Stories

People absorb information passively. Humans can, of course, intently study; but few can fully switch off passive learning. This gives advertising incredible power over people they do not recognize.

I vividly remember a multi-month period in my childhood when headlines about Tylenol overdoses dominated the nightly news. I also remember Aleve’s commercial saying, “Just two Aleve can stop the pain all day — it would take eight Tylenol to do that.” I was a child, but I’ve always held the Aleve commercials contributed to the Tylenol overdoses.

Originally published at https://www.masonpelt.com on April 27, 2023.

House Keeping

This article was written for broad syndication, along with links to my other recent work. I’m also linking to some interesting things I’ve been reading as I believe doing so makes the internet less platform dependent.

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BuzzFeed News And Twitter Blues

To greatly paraphrase Tolstoy, you can explain anything to a complete ding dong if they know nothing about the topic, but you’ll fail to explain it to the greatest minds if they start with any preconceptions. Cognitive bias is powerful. People will pay more for a worse product if they think the brand is better.