Mind Fields – Marketing to Obsessive Compulsives: Is It Fair?

Marketing To Obsessive Compulsives: Is It Fair?

May 16, 2021

That’s not supposed to be a funny title, but it is certainly ironic. Aren’t we all slightly OCD? Isn’t the condition of compulsiveness generic to our culture? Isn’t it nurtured, encouraged, normal, to be obsessive when we’re bombarded with messages to buy stuff that we don’t really need? I’m compulsive. Is there a difference between being compulsive and being an addict? There is, but it’s a question of degree. An addict is compulsive beyond reason, dominated by compulsions that create a self-harming syndrome. A “normal” obsessive compulsive is just another citizen of modern times. 

This subject began to entice me when I went hunting for a new camera. I don’t really need a new camera, but my current camera is from 2013. That is ancient in terms of digital cameras and their markets. It’s like having a thirty year old dog. The compulsion to upgrade is generated by massive commercial influences. It’s Canon and Nikon, Pentax and Fujinon. Asian conglomerates pour a lot of money into creating an itch, for the latest gear. The two big companies, Canon and Nikon, continue to manufacture upgrades and new iterations of the same basic camera features. Mostly what the newest cameras do is focus faster and weigh less. A lot faster. A lot less. And they cycle frame rates at 20 shots each second. This enlivens the “lucky shot” school of photography, meaning everyone who shoots with a camera. I bought my first digital camera eighteen years ago. It was an Olympus that featured a 2.1 megapixel sensor. The resolution of camera sensors has taken wings and there are now consumer cameras with 50 megapixels. I own a 20 megapixel camera and it takes beautifully sharp and accurate images. As did my 12 megapixel camera, and my 3.3 megapixel camera.

Do I yearn for the new 32 megapixel camera from Canon? Yes. I can’t help myself. I can’t help wondering what would 32 megapixels look like? One problem is that this kind of gear is really good. The makers of cameras have conquered an array of technical problems that go with acquiring digital images. They are brilliant! How good can these cameras get before CanIkonAx (choose yr company) lunges into our brains and starts taking out the visual cortex to implant image sensors in our heads? 

BUT: people like gear. People enjoy gear, so the in-the-brain-controlled- by -your -thoughts paradigm may have trouble acquiring lift. It may never get off the ground because what’s the fun of doing cool jobs when there’s no gear to play with but a chip of silicon within our bodies?? That may take a few hundred years, when we’ve learned that our very hardware bodies are also gear and there comes with this gear some interesting software. 

I’ve digressed from my original question. Is it fair to market to obsessive compulsives? Who else is there to market to? If you find a person free of neuroses it won’t be a person easily conned by ads and glitz.

To answer the question: NO! It’s not fair. It’s a way of rigging the society to feed the voracious maws of Business. I’ve written elsewhere on the idea that “contempt sells”. We’re treated with contempt every day. It is assumed by highly placed marketers that we’re stupid. We ARE kinda stupid. A lot of our behaviors are stupid and against our own interests. Electing charlatans to high office is stupid, but it happens all the time. Buying TV sets the size of walls is a bit stupid. It’s kind of cool but still, how big does your TV need to be? Do you need a hoist and crane to install it in your house?

Being OCD is the modern equivalent of being religious. In the middle ages one HAD to be religious or the authorities would hunt you down and kill you. Heretic! In our own times it’s consumerism that drives our religion. There are so many ways to drain our bank accounts, so many temptations that leap from our social media and TV to entice us as if with a sexual appetite. 

UHOH! This is the new SEX! No wonder it’s so powerful! People will climb over one another to experience five minutes of pleasure. People do the same thing at a store sale. Climb over each other to save a dollar. Now I get it. 

It’s not fair to market to obsessive compulsives, but there is no one else to whom the companies can market. This OCD, which I will now dub Exogenous OCD, or EOCD, has been created by the forces of modern civilization. 

It is said by some Buddhists that Emptiness is the true nature of reality. Deep inside ourselves we are aware, and terrified, of this condition. We will do a lot to escape from Emptiness. There is a giant misunderstanding about this term, Emptiness. It isn’t Nothingness. It’s Everythingness pouring into Nothingness. Always and now.

The market will be aimed at obsessive compulsives no matter what else happens. There is nothing we can do about it. We are the obsessive compulsives we hope to protect.