Odd O'blography

Truth in Advertising.

Those of a certain age, who grew up without internet and social media, may not be adept at searching URL's, but they may be better qualified to judge the results. I'm a product of the Mad Men advertising age, when commercials broke free of product constraints and the medium became the message. The story that convinces a consumer to buy is actually the product in today's marketing world. There's no longer any connection between the advertising claims and the performance of the product. And, who really cares about quality, price or functionality when the act of buying is the real object of commerce? The immediate gratification of buying anything outweighs the long-term satisfaction of having something. Why worry about having a CD when you can buy the stream over and over? Most physical products are quickly tossed in a landfill anyway.

Before Twitter and Facebook, people would forward emails instead of retweeting. The forwards would feature a joke of the day or an apocryphal news item with an embryonic clickbait image. Photoshop was just becoming a verb at that time and there were many gullible people who took the pictures at face value. One in particular showed an air-sea rescue with a coast guard helicopter winching up a basket just inches above the gaping maw of a lunging shark. It was well-done, but still an obvious fake due to the apparent size of the shark. The scammers soon upped their game and began assuring the reader that "this is a real image, not Photoshop!" Well, if you have to start with a claim that you're not lying, then that's pretty much an admission that a lie is coming next.

The problem with disseminating misinformation via email, however, was the difficulty in monetizing the product. The pay-per-click advertising model of today's internet is one solution. And social media provides another. Now, your 'friends' can sell you products directly, and they can start off inside your circle of trust. And that's the big red flag for Truth Social. By definition, the user must trust the community and accept any dubious claim at face value. But, just like a photoshopped shark, if you need to put the word truth in the title, then that's pretty much an admission that there won't be any in the content.