Share This Link

"Share" and "Like" this link and you will be put into a draw and possibly win something... Really???

I see this all the time. And what I think when I see it is that someone has been bought and then sold all of their friends for the possibility of winning some bauble...

Oh, I am sure that some people genuinely like whatever it is they have forced onto my newsfeed, and some people genuinely liked it but only came out of the closet with the possibility of a treat. Some people only care about the prize, and some people like me, will refuse to like whatever it is as soon as you start treating me and my relationships as commodities that can be bought and sold for advertising, regardless of whether we like it or not.

This of course puts me in conundrum, because I am working on starting a business in videography... And as such I am forced to wrestle into practicality the ethics of advertising and marketing and sales in general. The problem is basically that I loathe these fields from the very centre of my being and would literally be more comfortable being a criminal defence lawyer than working in advertising. So perhaps I will begin studying for the LSAT...

I know that to level a critique against advertising is easy and demands something more... I also know that many small local companies are doing good work and working hard within the system we have inherited. I just happen to hate the system and I know this means I need to not merely be critical but propose an alternative style or approach. I think what I want is a more genuine approach that doesn't appeal to people's self interest and rest its presuppositions of utilitarian moral theory. Part of the reason advertising particularly relational advertising works is because people trust their friends - they want to trust their friends... and it is actually relationally damaging to take the perspective I have because in my cynicism I run the risk of interpreting peoples actions very negatively, which may or may not be fair. This ironically betrays that my position also hold utilitarian moral theory as a presupposition and therefore finds it difficult to believe that people "liking" links or pages for prizes has anything other than self interest in mind and therefore find it offensive.

This then is what I am trying to escape: utilitarian moral theory. I want to move toward gift language, gift economics... I think that Radiohead moves in the right direction with the "gift" of their album "In Rainbows" inaugurating "pay what you want." I think this moves humanity in a good direction which expects and values trust and relationship over greed and self interest. Radiohead and others have proven this model is not insane or entirely untenable.

I have a friend who asked me what I thought about trying to apply this model to a manufacturing situation. I said I thought it would be difficult... North Americans don't like flexible pricing or haggling over products. Furthermore, we have been trained to think in utilitarian terms and so to do things differently one must simultaneously risk losses and present "pay what you want" in terms that push people out their utilitarian thinking patterns...  For independently wealthy and famous creators of digital media with online channels of distribution these are of course not really risks or challenges at all. For anyone operating in material production and on a smaller scale the risks, of course, increase exponentially. I am sorry that I discouraged my friend rather than trying to imagine with him how to not just pitch his product but a different way of thinking about and doing business.

We write on this blog as a gift. We have created art and video as gift. How do we re-imagine our lives and jobs and businesses genuinely as gift? How do we recenter our live around trust rather than fear?

Gift Economics. Give.

Monetised/Sponsored

What are three unemployed grads to do other than monetise their blog? This mean that you will now see ads as part of this experience. Yes we know you are inundated with advertising all day and you just wanted to escape and read a little jaded, critical, and miserable theological ramblings and other shenanigans, not be sold books and boats and mustaches but hey we didn't create this blog out of anti advertising ideals we created it out of boredom. If you want learn how to stick it to the adman and take back the streets with a meme war go read adBusters but if you want to see what real and theological hijinx we get up to: we will be here whoring our creative and intellectual content to the best of our abilities. Today we watched Annie Hall and discussed further the meaninglessness of life and frustrations of job searching. I made more money before I went to college, its a good thing I didn't go to school to get a job... mind you if I had done that perhaps I would be finding something right now. My wife called me an author yesterday, that was a great ego boost. We are now sponsored authors.


One new years a few years ago, some friends and I met a guy on the skytrain, drunk as a skunk, but out of his intoxicated mouth came some of the most beautiful words of truth I have heard in my life, literally linguistic liquid gold: "Free! Thats like my first favourite word." We asked what his second favourite word was and his response was, "Sponsored..." he said, with glazed look of glory frozen on his face as he stared into space and imagined selling out in order to get paid to play. I am experiencing that right now. We three young jaded idealists standing here on the edge of glory having just sold our souls moments ago for advertising revenue - having commoditized the very relationships which provide the meaning in our meaningless lives and we are hanging on this moment of truth to find out will we fall? will lose it all? would anyone pay us to write without ads? How do you feel being part of the largest psychological experiment in human history? "Advertising" - coming soon...