More about ads

It seems likely that almost everybody is influenced by ads in some way or other, and that there are basically three groups of people in this respect: some people are so gullible/such pleasers they will actually do what ads want them to do. This is the relatively small group of people that give a lease on life to certain types of teleshopping companies that sell products of very dubious quality. Another, equally small group of people are extremely critical, will try to resist any attempt at being manipulated into doing or buying something, and may even take decisions that are against their own interest in an attempt to avoid being manipulated. Most people are probably somewhere in the middle: their reaction or response to most ads is moderate (although they might still react in one of the abovementioned extreme ways for certain ads).

Most people would probably call this "moderate" behaviour reasonable, because (contrary to what the title of one of my previous blog entries on the subject might suggest) not every ad is bad. Of course there are ads that succeed in convincing people to buy things they don't really need or want, but other ads can also simply call attention to a real need or desire. And of course there are ads that can fool you into believing that one product is better or even much better than another, but you can also use ads as a first step towards choosing the right product for you.

An example.
"Read my blog - it's funny and interesting!"
Anyone with a little bit of common sense will realise that there is no way I can be sure that you will find my blog funny or interesting (and to be honest*, most of my entries are not at all funny, although I do hope they are interesting). They are however criteria that you may want to consider when deciding which blogs to read.

*And how about this little piece of surreptitious advertising: did it work? Do you think - on the basis of this entry - that I am being honest (and am therefore honest by nature)? Or have the alarm bells started ringing?

Next blog, please

The first time I used the "Next blog" function (at the top of this page, last item on the left) , I quite liked it. Like a trip through the strange and wonderful world of other people's minds, each click would take me somewhere else. In that time, I have seen blogs on owl tatoos, informatics, anthropology, pink pride ... just about anything under the sun. Since blogger abandoned the random principle, however, I am less enchanted.

I have tried to find the link between what I write and the "next blog" (e.g. in the blogspot blog) but it is not obvious. It promises to present the reader with related material in the same language, and it does. But I expected something similar to targetted advertising, in which case it would either use the key words I enter, the text itself, and/or any links to my blog. Had that been the case, my next blogs would have probably been a strange mixture of natural sciences, raising children, and home-grown psychology. Lately, however, most of my "next blogs" are from fundamentalist Christian (Protestant) families. The family part I can understand - I do write about my children a lot - but the Christian part? I am an ex-Catholic writing mostly about humanist values. (Yes, I realise that I am still more similar to Protestants than to Muslims or Hindus, but still).

Of course, I could always start censoring myself, and only publish entries on politics, art, science and philosophy, or better still, create separate blogs, one for each main area of interest. But I already have four (this one, two on music, and one at work), each one presenting a slightly difference aspect of myself. Anytime now I will develop the first documented case of multiple virtual personality disorder.