Everyone is in a consumer’s hypnosis, even if you think you are not. When you go to a store and pick one brand over the other, you are now under their spell. The spell/ hypnosis is how companies get you to buy there things over other companies and keep you hooked. Either through commercials or offering something that you think will make your life better by what they tell you. For example, you go to the store and you need to buy water, once you get to the lane and look, there is 10 different types of water you can buy. You go pick one either because the picture is better or you seen the commercial the other day and you want it. During the length of this paper we will talk about two important writers, Kalle Lasn the writer of “The Cult You’re in” and Benoit Denizet-Lewis writer of “ The Man Behind Abercrombie & Fitch”. They both talk about similar topics that go hand and hand with each other, they talk about the consumers “Dream”, how companies recruit the consumers, who cult members really are, how people are forced to wear something they don’t want, and about slackers.
What is The Dream we all have? Think about the main things that you strive for in life. Well everyone else in the world has the same dream because companies or “cults” in bead this dream to pull you in to their “cult”/ group. They make it seem that you will be happy with having this dream and they can help you get close to it by you buying their stuff. Lasn specifies on this dream everyone as he said “Dream by definition, are supposed to be unique and imaginative. Yet the bulk of the population is dreaming the same dream. It’s a dream of wealth, power, fame, plenty of sex, and exciting recreational opportunities” ( lasn, 380). This dream is feed to us by the peopl...
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...teens can shop elsewhere ‘In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not so cool kids,’ he says” (Denizet-Luis, 369). So if your different then there target audience you don’t belong in the group which would consider you a type of slacker.
All and all, we are all in a consumer cult if we want to or not. If you go to the store all you see is brands and you need to buy one no matter what. But what you can do is stop over buying things you don’t need that you think will make you happy. The companies are manipulative in many ways because they show you this “dream” of a life by buy their stuff, once you are hooked on it they recruit you, bring you in to the cult, make you do stuff you don’t want to, and then if you become a slacker they alienate you away from the other “cut” members so you can’t influence them to become a slacker too.
All in all, the book Age of Propaganda: The Use and Abuse of Persuasion by Partkanis and Aronson points out the flaws in the advertising and marketing methods. The purpose of the four stratagems in marketing is to most effectively catch consumers’ attention and get them to buy their product. The strategies are pre-persuasion, source credibility, message and emotion. The authors point out that the race of corporations to beat one another to consumers has created a world of advertising that is cluttered with tactics that take away the truth of the product. If this trend continues, and these stratagems continue to be installed, our world will be littered with over-the-top and pointless campaigns.
The American Dream is something common to most individuals, however it's one thing that everybody views in several ways. The American Dream is totally different for everybody, however they share a number of a similar aspects of it. The dream relies mainly on the setting of wherever one lives and one‘s social status. for instance, The Declaration of Independence was by Thomas Jefferson, who was an upper class white male. He needed freedom, however freedom for people like himself that were white land owning people. martin luther King, in his I have a Dream speech, also demanded freedom, but mostly for African Americans like him. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in his book the great Gatsby, that he wants to eliminate the rich, which he was a section of. every American Dream is somewhat totally different, however all of them relate to the days that one lives in.
The dreams of people are the most important things to anyone. Mainly due to the fact that dreams make up whom a person is at heart. An infinite number of people have had and will continue to have their lives destroyed because they chased a dream, and unfortunately they didn’t run fast enough. Among these people are Lennie Small and Jay Gatsby. These two gentlemen had the displeasure of chasing a dream that was unachievable even from the very beginning. This eventually led to the death of these two young people. In the end, a more precise name for the American dream just keeps coming to mind. That is The American Nightmare.
Consumerism is the idea that influences people to purchase items in great amounts. Consumerism makes trying to live the life of a “perfect American” rather difficult. It interferes with society by replacing the normal necessities for life with the desire for things with not much concern for the true value of the desired object. Children are always easily influenced by what they watch on television. Swimme suggests in his work “How Do Kids Get So Caught Up in Consumerism” that although an advertiser’s objective is to make money, the younger generation is being manipulated when seeing these advertisements. Before getting a good understanding of a religion, a child will have seen and absorbed at least 30,000 advertisements. The amount of time teenagers spend in high school is lesser than the amount of advertisement that they have seen (155). The huge amount of advertisements exposed to the younger generation is becomi...
While some commercials may seem like they are trying too hard and essentially forcing consumers to buy their product, most advertisements have the same approach, hegemony. Instead of straight out saying “buy my product or we will hunt you down”, instead, companies will take their audience into consideration and move forward by attracting that specific group. Wall Street, for example, targets undergraduates because they can be easily persuaded and manipulated as most of them are still assimilating into the transition from high school to college; So, everything is new and open to interpretation. By exposing students to the lavishness and extravagance of an investment banker’s lifestyle, investment bankers can hook students and leave them yearning for more, as “they quickly become used to the respect, status, and impressive nods from peers” (Ho 179). Like getting addicted to a drug, these students are dependent on inclusion of investment banking when exposed. Because this is so ubiquitous, it is hard to notice. It is like the breathing, it is only when a person directs their attention to it that they start noticing it. This can be related to hegemony, it plays a role in a person’s daily life, but it is only when something goes wrong that a person will start investigating what went wrong. This is seen in Reading Lolita in Tehran, where Nafisi and a group of her
There are many people who are driven by consumerism and many people who wish they can get in touch with that type of world. Consumers are often promoted to advertise more of the products that they are buying to get more people to buy more products. Hari Kunzru, author of “Raj, Bohemian,” creates a narrator who is obsessed with maintaining his individuality and free will in a world that is overcome with consumerism. Believes that the world takes away individuality when consumerism comes into play and how hard it is to maintain their true self. In her LA Times article “Teen Haulers Create a Fashion Force,” Andrea Chang writes about the phenomenon of teenage Youtube users who make videos that publicize their latest shopping binges. She expresses
Mystery cults greatly influenced the development of Pythagoreanism as Pythagoreans adopted many of their traditions, behaviors and beliefs. Pythagoras, the founder of the Pythagoreans, established a school in which he developed and taught these adopted cultural behaviors and beliefs. "The nature of daily living in the school, both its moral and its intellectual disciplines, can perhaps best be understood as an intellectualized development from earlier mystery cults such as the Eleusinian" (Wheelwright 201). The Pythagoreans and the mystery cults were not identical, but they shared many similar beliefs on subjects such as the soul, transmigration and reincarnation, and they practiced many of the traditions of initiation, ritual and secrecy. Pythagoreans combined the mystery cults' views on these subjects with philosophical thought as a foundation to develop their own unique beliefs.
The American Dream, a dream that is fruitful to many and invisible to others. There have been many different views of this dream; some see it as a stream of rewards paying people back for their hard work, while others see as a tantalizing fantasy that gives false hope to many Americans. The dream has had many different identities throughout history. Changes in the culture, economy, and politics have contributed to the shift of the American Dream.
Webster defines a dream as "something notable for its beauty, excellence, or enjoyable quality." This seems, logically, something that everyone desires to obtain. However not everyone is the same therefore each dream is not the same. According to certain works of literature regarding the 1950's-60's though, it appears as if many people are quite disillusioned and believe their dream is the one and only dream suitable for everyone. This American Dream consists of a nice job, nice spouse, nice house, nice kids, nice car and all the money, money, money you can get your hands on. Anyone who desires differently is unacceptable.
The American Dream has changed; it is no longer the same as it was fifty or even one hundred years ago. Today, people not only search for prosperity and wealth, but they also search for happiness, equality, and determination. The American Dream is for everyone, not just the rich. The term “The American Dream” is a term used to describe the American way of life in general. It is a noun stating “the idea that every US citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative.” Dreams are not limited to just one social class, everyone has a different version of the American Dream but they all work together in a community to create an organized, working society. A dream is a cherished aspiration, ambition, or idea that is open to anyone.
A cult is defined as a social group or a social movement under one charismatic leader. It maintains a belief system, which includes a transformation of a group member. Members of the group have a high level of commitment to the leader, members, and beliefs (Lalich). An additional definition to consider is from the American Journal of Psychotherapy:
A reader will clearly understand whether the advertising influences people or not, also will recognize how advertising forces people to buy things they do not need. It is also important to distinguish between manipulation and influence. During the whole work, we will show exact examples and evidence of how actually advertising manipulates people and why we do not see it. On the other hand, we will also describe non-manipulative advertising and how people can avoid senseless purchase.
The rise of the consumer culture is a phenomenon characteristic for the twentieth century. The impact of this cultural movement is disputable.
I have a dream… you have a dream… our nation has a dream… our world has a dream. We all have a dream.