A lot of people are mad at Facebook because the site did a “psychological experiment” on users. Apparently, Facebook messed around with people’s newsfeeds to see how different types of posts (happy or sad) affected their inclination to post happy or sad stuff.
Then Facebook published the findings in a science-y journal, and people got super-mad all over the interwebs. Facebook was messing with their heads! Facebook was messing with their newsfeeds! Facebook is terribly bad and should be terribly ashamed!
Um, OK? Has everyone forgotten that marketing and advertising are things? They are things that bombard us all the time, everywhere we go, and they are designed to make us feel all kinds of feels and want all kinds of wants. They are absolutely messing with our heads at every moment of every day in an attempt to get us to part with our dollars in exchange for whatever it is they’re selling. It’s called capitalism. It’s pretty popular, as a rule, here in ‘Merica.
The only difference between that relentless everyday marketing and Facebook’s little experiment is that we can avoid Facebook. It’s easy. Don’t use it. The rest of that stuff is harder to avoid. Billboards, in particular, are an absolute plague of in-your-face, like-it-or-not marketing and advertising.
“Wax your whole body or you’re not pretty enough” suggests the bikini-ed vixen on the billboard. (Which makes me wonder fleetingly if my grooming rituals are adequate.) My poor, battered psyche. But I don’t see anyone freaking out about that.