I was without my iPhone which within itself is a cause for mild panic; but then, the grocery store did not have Persil Laundry detergent, I have used Persil for the last couple of years after I gave up the “eco detergents.” I stared at the shelves as if I had the ability to make a jug of Persil appear. I would have used my phone and googled, best laundry detergent; but, I had no phone.
How do I choose. There was the fresh scent Gain, but if it’s got to be clean, it’s got to be Tide. Prior to this experience, I would have said, I am not impacted by advertising. Yet, here I was reaching for Tide because, in a choice between clean or fresh scent, I want clean! But is that truth or advertising?
The truth is, I’m more ad driven than I’d care to admit. Just because I am prone to do a kind of “fact check” by looking at reviews and the numerous of stars. Over the winter break, I’d rewatched the first few episodes of the television series, Madmen, and became acutely aware of the mental manipulation of advertising.
It’s not my “research,” it’s critical thinking. You have to question things. I oppose “Santa Claus.” Santa Claus is the gateway to an abandoment of critical thinking. Come on, one man that is portrayed as older and robust drops down chimneys around the world, lives at the north pole, blah, blah, blah. As a child, I’m sure I annoyed adults, well, this narrative annoyed me. It wasn’t plausible.
Embrace critical thinking. Have you seen the ads for the Dog Bark translator? You speak a command for the dog and the app translates it into barks. The ads look so good. The dog hears the translated barks and leaps into action. But do they work? Are you seeing what you are seeing, or are you viewing a monetized video?
Panicked around AI? Stop it. You’ve seen the videos of older stars with their younger selves, you know it’s AI. You can identify AI because of your critical thinking. There are other videos that may seem slightly out of character for the person, but the voice sounds right. I experience this with a commentator, the image looked like him and sounded like him, yet, the messages were angry and that’s when I noticed a lack of filler words like, the uhms, aah, likes and you knows – vocal fillers, or speech disfluencies. I quick google confirmed my suspicions. Yes, the technology will get better, but, so will you at detection.
Critical thinking. How often are you given a narrative to provide context to something you’ve seen that triggers cognitive dissonance. Allow the indulgence of critical thinking to become a necessity.
Balancing on Unstable Surfaces 