>>2506818There's no conspiracy, just a bunch of counterintuitive market forces.
1. Minoritarianism. Why do all supermarkets stock halal/kosher food when only a fraction of the population has those religions? shouldn't 70% of supermarkets lack those products? No. That's intuitive, but it's wrong. There's an asymmetry of preferences: non-muslims/jews don't usually object to halal/kosher food (if they morally disapprove, it doesn't show at the checkout) while muslims/jews do object to non-halal/kosher food. Therefore, you gain a competitive advantage by stocking kosher/halal food even when the population share of people with that dietary preference is relatively low. If there's an asymmetry in the effectiveness of advertising (e.g. minorities respond more positively to portrayal than white people respond negatively to their non-portrayal), the same effect applies. (This also covers the "white man playing music" example: A pakistani man who sees a man like himself doing something bad is going to respond negatively to the advert and not do what it says. If old white men don't play music on the train, it doesn't matter if you offend them because they're not doing the offensive thing in the first place.)
2. Have you ever noticed how beauty companies - who produce expensive products for negative-sum social status games - are always running the wokest adverts on TV? Forget "oh, everyone in this advert is a wheelchair bound black lesbian", they run fucking
lectures about the value and beauty of disabled, minority, mensturating, etc, bodies. Why?
Look at a fucking poll!
Because young women love that shit! The fact that your product is fundamentally not-woke but your consumer-base is fundamentally woke creates a massive need to go "yeah, obviously beauty standards are problematic, but we here at dove
hear you, those feelings are
valid, we're the beauty product with a social conscience"
Advertising works by sending a costly social signal to everyone out there. Want to look normal? Drink a coke. Why? Because coke have flooded society with the message that coke is what you drink to be normal. Want to be a bit weird and self-indulgent? Have a Dr. Pepper - you deserve a treat. Scottish? Irn Bru is made in Scotland from Girders (and aspartame). You then buy the product linked with the image you want to project to th
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