Lengthy descriptions, flowery wording, made up names of farms of origin, the type font used, the order that items appear, the weight of the menu paper, the binding, the colors, the photographs – every aspect of a restaurant menu is working to manipulate your decision.
Last week, the news reported speculated that “fears of an economic recession could derail the holiday season”. This week, that speculation is already old news as Black Friday broke shopping records.
How did dark chocolate become a health food in the United States? Industry funded studies finding obscure benefits were then touted by press release, then rewritten into health food stories by news reporters. It’s been a highly successful propaganda campaign that turned high fat, high sugar foods into health foods (contrary to the earlier meme that high fat and sugar foods are bad for us).
Perennial fictional news reporter CNBC tops them all in an article about the shortage of epinephrine auto-injectors (also known by the brand name Epi-Pen).
They illustrate the article with a photo of a child being injected with insulin in the arm – but falsely label it as a child receiving an EpiPen injection. Epinephrine auto injectors are used on the thigh muscle, not the arm.
CNBC made a reckless and dangerous error that could be life threatening by training the public to misuse an EpiPen. The original photo they used was clearly labeled as an insulin injection but CNBC intentionally and false changed it to say it is an EpiPen injection.
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Nice illustration of how easy we can be fooled by numbers: to save gas, do you upgrade your 36 mpg car to a newer 46 mpg car, or do you upgrade your pickup truck from 15 mpg to 18 mpg? You drive both the same amount per year. Most people will select the 10 mpg fuel improvement – but they’ll save twice as much gas if they updated the pick up truck.
Some great examples of how people make decisions – and conclusions – based on marketing propaganda. Many now choose “almond milk” because production doesn’t produce as much green house gases (notably methane) as produced by dairy milk. Except it takes 6.098 liters (1,611 US gallons) to make 1 liter of almond milk, and most almonds are grown in California which has high variability (e.g. frequent drought) in rainfall. People make supposedly environmentally friendly choices based on incorrect information, limited information, or missing critical context.
Six months ago, I wrote about airlines’ new policies of dividing cabins into as many as 9 different tiers or classes of customers, creating a sense of peer pressure between the haves and have-nots. Now, researchers say this passenger hierarchy appears to lead to more in flight aggression by passengers.
Facebook continues to claim they oppose discrimination in all forms, in spite of mountains of evidence showing they continue to discriminate based on age, gender and other attributes in their ad platform.
Social media promoters know that “outrage” leads to more views. That’s why conspiracy theories and other outrageous content flourish on social media – because they are watched.
Glassdoor is a web site where workers write reviews of their employer and work environment. Not surprisingly, many companies are gaming the system, flooding it with 5-star reviews.