They're Stealing Your Attention

originally posted by: intrptr
a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan

Those input devices you call "senses" are turned on even if your full attention is not.

Senses are just that, input. I decide whats what.

Even if your consciousness was so focused and in control all the time, tha data from senses are registered by subconscious sorted and stored during the sleep into long term memory. I can imagine such everyday data overload can be harmful to the hippocampus. It's like a depersonalization from 100% CPU usage.

a reply to: teapot

That is not a silly example, because it creates social isolation. Consider the person who isn't hired due to lack of a facebook account. Using interprtr from earlier as an example, he claims to make purchase choices based on cost. This strategy is likely the most resistant to advertising, as choices are reduced to a formulaic output. For example: i don't care about toothpaste commercials, im going to buy Aim regardless due to its price and relative effectiveness (we don't eat many carbs anyway).

Social interaction and networking is cornerstone to humanity. We have created a world within our world where we are required (under threat of death...try to not pay taxes and test my assertion out) to interact with the greater social construct. Part of this is creating social connections that improve things like job prospects, etc. With the ubiquitous nature of advertising, you risk social isolation if you are not, at the very least, aware of this stuff. Consider the Monday morning watercooler after the Super Bowl....half the talk is about the game, the other half about the commercials. You cannot get an "in" by just discussing the sport generically anymore. Your "in" derives from being able to recall a couple of the ads you saw that were funny. When the social pressure is on, you have to dance like a little monkey or you become isolated. No one wants to be the outcast at the office.

a reply to: Michet

It's a great quote and I agree with a lot of it. However, doesn't he do the same thing with his Guerrilla art? He sticks it in your face without you consenting to it?

originally posted by: PapagiorgioCZ

originally posted by: intrptr
a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan

Those input devices you call "senses" are turned on even if your full attention is not.

Senses are just that, input. I decide whats what.

Even if your consciousness was so focused and in control all the time, tha data from senses are registered by subconscious sorted and stored during the sleep into long term memory. I can imagine such everyday data overload can be harmful to the hippocampus. It's like a depersonalization from 100% CPU usage.

Our consciousness is different than our awareness. I choose to ignore certain things, regardless when it 'comes up', internal or external, and I'm not perfect ether.

I more easily tune things out that I have learned are a waste of my time. Like ads, certain tv programming, rituals, traditions, culture, flags, nationalism, religion... took a long time to unbind those chains... is that something exclusive to old age and experience? Somewhat, but I always had it.

I was 'programmed' from birth like everyone else. But something in me refused to give in, to give over my attention, allegiance so to speak. Hard to describe, I always rebelled; different drummer, didn't 'go along', or pretended to while remaining defiant in my mind.

Some people train themselves to distraction, so are in a permanent state of distraction, able to be manipulated or influenced by suggestion, to go along.

Just another back against the wall.

a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan

What about my freedom of thought? Why should my memories be filled with copyrighted imagery without my consent? Its not like im flipping through a magazine, or watching TV. Its everywhere outside dominating the vistas of my natural landscape.

This would also include art of all kinds, architecture, fashion, music, the smell of food cooking...the news, this site

Walden Pond Tex. You need to Thoreau yourself a separate reality

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

I love advertising. I'm serious - it's an art form even when it irritates me. It forces a reaction - it makes me think. Some of it is beautiful. Some of it is inane and intrusive. All of it is human. It's all us. Nothing less and nothing more

Having said that - I dream of my Walden all the time

a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan

you can add social media to your concern of the assault on your mental faculties.
the "group think" social media develops is frightening. once an idea catches on in social media, critical thinking is pushed to the back burner.

Welcome to Corporate America. If you can't compete with other countries. Hijack the citizens freedom for more money.

Commercials can also be used as a cover up right now. Especially when CNN cuts people off and puts commercial on.

America went against everyone, now time to taste your own medicine. Canada lost most of its companies, there used to be a deal that the Gov protects Canadian companies. China was forced to accept US companies. Africans nations were force to accept Companies through force. Mexicans are forced to compete, but they fail any how because of constant drug war cause by US. Russia is being blocked to death, so EU are forced to trade with American companies only.

Don't get me started with South Korea, and Japan with US bases. Japan is stabbing itself in the back right now. Just wait til China falls. They be asking for freedom like NK from white people.

www.voanews.com...

You have people complaining about Duterte when he is actually doing # to protect his country from foreign influence.

a reply to: intrptr

It's a paradox of the Pledge of Allegiance. When a kid is forced to stand and recite it it creates a negative psychological response: being less patriotic, atheist in the future etc. Rebelion itself becomes a part of a non-creative personality.
So on the same principle, too much of extraneous data could make the brain go into states like adhd. when there's less capacity left for personal inside-out brain-life and creativity

Every one here suffers from internet addiction and related symptoms

i like car commercials

Im telling you all, its coming....



Just like idiocracy......
www.redbubble.com...

Its already started actually. How many people have you seen wearing NASCAR type jackets? Think about how much sponsors pay for an advertising spot on a race car... now think about the $300+ people pay for these coats. Does that make sense???

a reply to: PapagiorgioCZ

It's a paradox of the Pledge of Allegiance. When a kid is forced to stand and recite it it creates a negative psychological response: being less patriotic, atheist in the future etc. Rebellion itself becomes a part of a non-creative personality.

Kids don't know what they are pledging, its rote for them. Plenty of patriots though who later embellished their 'conditioning' thru repetition. The ones that go to the ball game, Nascar, or Fourth of July fireworks.

They never let up. The teachers desk, the news desk, the podium, the pulpit, ongoing conditioning to make and keep people conformed.

Same with bits of colored cloth called flags, religious icons like crosses, and yes the pledge of allegiance. I stood and pledged but I didn't understand it that young. To me it was the same as 'church' , some blah blah blah like in Charlie Brown... if you get that reference.

how about this one? should we all say we dont like it? did you made a plan and didnt tell me yet?

a reply to: Spiramirabilis

Thoreau is my favorite US thinker and author (Twain runs a close second). I love Walden.....maybe we will get a bit of that soon enough.

You and I seem to define art similarly: art is meant to evoke emotion. Even if that emotion is sheer hatred, its still art (im looking at you, Kanye and Nickelback)

a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan

You and I seem to define art similarly: art is meant to evoke emotion. Even if that emotion is sheer hatred, its still art (im looking at you, Kanye and Nickelback)

We definitely do

If you think about it - being human might mean everything we do is art. Trying to define what art is is one of my favorite things

a reply to: Spiramirabilis

So then you won't laugh at me when I tell you that Microsoft Excel is one of my favorite canvases to place my art into? Its the thrill of making a well oiled, fully automated machine. I think actual coders feel similarly

originally posted by: intrptr

originally posted by: PapagiorgioCZ

originally posted by: intrptr
a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan

Those input devices you call "senses" are turned on even if your full attention is not.

Senses are just that, input. I decide whats what.

Even if your consciousness was so focused and in control all the time, tha data from senses are registered by subconscious sorted and stored during the sleep into long term memory. I can imagine such everyday data overload can be harmful to the hippocampus. It's like a depersonalization from 100% CPU usage.

Our consciousness is different than our awareness. I choose to ignore certain things, regardless when it 'comes up', internal or external, and I'm not perfect ether.

I more easily tune things out that I have learned are a waste of my time. Like ads, certain tv programming, rituals, traditions, culture, flags, nationalism, religion... took a long time to unbind those chains... is that something exclusive to old age and experience? Somewhat, but I always had it.

I was 'programmed' from birth like everyone else. But something in me refused to give in, to give over my attention, allegiance so to speak. Hard to describe, I always rebelled; different drummer, didn't 'go along', or pretended to while remaining defiant in my mind.

Some people train themselves to distraction, so are in a permanent state of distraction, able to be manipulated or influenced by suggestion, to go along.

Just another back against the wall.

Firstly, great post OP!

intrptr, you sound just like me when you describe yourself. 'Programmed' as you say unsuccessfully and yes it took a long time to unlearn though for me that happened rather early in life, so, no I do not think that to be related to old age. I would rather call it 'surfacing the unconscious' or de-programming. You mentioned awareness, it also includes awareness of your consciousness and its movements, does it not?

There are so many ways we have been fooled and manipulated over the ages (read civilization) that we have forgotten who we really are. So we ask silly questions, why are we here? what is our purpose? what is the meaning of life? Yet we carry every answer within were we never dare venture, the objective world seems so much more real, the answer must be out there. Somehow, this is the greatest deception, that the inner world is less real than the outer. Advertising, like one of many phenomena of civilization only fools you if you look without and not within.

A timely article:

www.nature.com...

Most people choose to listen to music that they prefer or ‘like’ such as classical, country or rock. Previous research has focused on how different characteristics of music (i.e., classical versus country) affect the brain. Yet, when listening to preferred music—regardless of the type—people report they often experience personal thoughts and memories. To date, understanding how this occurs in the brain has remained elusive. Using network science methods, we evaluated differences in functional brain connectivity when individuals listened to complete songs. We show that a circuit important for internally-focused thoughts, known as the default mode network, was most connected when listening to preferred music. We also show that listening to a favorite song alters the connectivity between auditory brain areas and the hippocampus, a region responsible for memory and social emotion consolidation. Given that musical preferences are uniquely individualized phenomena and that music can vary in acoustic complexity and the presence or absence of lyrics, the consistency of our results was unexpected. These findings may explain why comparable emotional and mental states can be experienced by people listening to music that differs as widely as Beethoven and Eminem. The neurobiological and neurorehabilitation implications of these results are discussed.

I mentioned earlier my strategy for dealing with a world set to distract me from what matters at that moment: my thoughts. Believe it or not, i think constantly. Typically im problem solving for work, which I love doing. But other times im thinking about a visual effect that i want to create, or trying to step into the mindset of other individuals (its how i practice empathy, and have learned to understand people). I do all manner of exercises like that, all with some practical purpose.

To acieve this in a world that inundates you with information requires some mode of blocking. The best i've found is music. I wear earbuds for up to 8 hours a day while i try to work from my house. Its grand central station, so gaining focus requires effort.

My musical tastes range from Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller to Slipknot and Tool to David Allan Coe and John Prine to Beethoven and Mozart. An added benefit is that it helps with memory, as music can create nostalgia, which helps professionally when tied to a task related victory.

originally posted by: Brian4real
Im telling you all, its coming....

Just like idiocracy......
www.redbubble.com...

Its already started actually. How many people have you seen wearing NASCAR type jackets? Think about how much sponsors pay for an advertising spot on a race car... now think about the $300+ people pay for these coats. Does that make sense???

This is a reason why I refuse to wear any kind of clothing with any kind of highly visible label or brand name: what is the purpose? Why do people feel they need to wear a shirt with a huge Nike logo, or a huge Under Armour The North Face logo, or anything? It's free advertising and you're not getting paid to advertise, you're PAYING to advertise FOR them. Does it help one to feel like one fits in, or to help with their own identity crisis, to make them feel like they BELONG?

If I wear a shirt with anything recognizable, it will band I like, or a political statement I want to express, something that means something to me: it's expression for a reason. What kind of expression is advertising a brand?

No, it makes little sense to me, also.

a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan

I have no problem escaping the ad blitz on the road. All you have to do is leave a main highway. It's not that difficult.

a reply to: TatTvamAsi

Somehow, this is the greatest deception, that the inner world is less real than the outer.

Got all tingly reading that.