Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy, by Martin Lindstrom

EXCELLENT book about marketing from a major insider. Lindstrom is coming from a fascinating ethical place- his  career has been about creating demand for products he can't really support, and his guilt is palpable, but for all that, there's an almost viscious glee in his ripping off the veils of his industry. The book is like a fascinating self-flagellation, but at the same time is one of the best books I've read on the topic of marketing manipulation. Fantastic book.

Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood, by Susan Linn

Interesting, if older (2005) book about aggressive marketing directed toward children, and the damage it can do.

The Unidentified, by Rae Mariz

I really enjoyed this book, but felt that it was thematically so similar to so many books that it didn't feel fresh (I see the comparisons to Westerfeld, but more to Claire Carmichael's Leaving Simplicity and even Suzanne Weyn's The Barcode Tattoo). Also, I thought the language was likely to date VERY fast- unlike Westerfeld's created slang, using current (and some already dated) terms weakened the book. (Isn't craftster so 2004??? ;) Still, it would be thought provoking if one wasn't already immune to that same Larry-brand anti-consumerism rah rah rah.

So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids, by Diane E. Levin and Jean Kilbourne

Yet another book about the lolita-ization of girlhood, and how parents and teachers (and librarians?) can help counteract the societal pressures.

A bit blah, but I think I've overloaded on this topic.

The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future, by Mark Bauerlein

This was intense!

I read it all in one horrified sitting, and can't get it out of my head.

Now, sure- I know (as Bauerlein admits right off the bat) that every age has had it's elders (god, I guess at 33 I'm an elder? I don't know) looking at it's youth, and saying what a pack of idiots they seem, but Bauerlein comes at this armed with an almost overwhelming array of studies that seem to point pretty damn conclusively to one tragic fact- that the high school graduates of today have learned less, comparatively, than high school graduates of previous generations, and by a lot. Also, high drop out rates skew those numbers further, and test scores of young Americans have plummeted over the past 15 years in comparison with other developed nations. Add to that rapid drops in college students being judged ready for college work, and even more disturbing drops in students majoring in maths, physics, or engineering, and we're looking at Idiocracy, man.

Oh so many tidbits and statistics pounded it home, with a passion and an eloquence that was really impressive.

One of the most interesting aspects for me, was the impact of a large vocabulary upon entering kindergarten, and the incidence of "rare words" on television and in print. I'll just give this one bit:

"One criterion researchers use is the rate of "rare words" in spoken and written discourse. They define "rare words" as words that do not rank in the top 10,000 in terms of frequency of usage. With the rare word scale, researchers can examine various media for the number of rare words per thousand, as well as the median-word ranking for each medium as a whole....

Rank of median word Rare words per 1000

• newspapers 1690 68.3
• adult books 1058 52.7
• comic books 867 53.5
• children's books 578 16.3
• prime-time adult tv 490 22.7
• prime-time children tv 543 20.2
• Sesame Street 413 2.0"

All very interesting, no? And add to this that the kids today, our so-called Digital generation spend so much of their time online- for some reason, this seems to fill folks with all sorts of giddy hope that these kids are going to learn things online. Well, I have seen teens online for hours- hour after hour of gorgeous sunny day, and they can't tear themselves away for the stupidest junk available online. It's pathetic. They can't spell, they can't type, they are not learning how to program or design games, they are learning to buy and shop and that it's cute to misspell things and in general being misled in every possible way by the only adults who are looking at them in an interested fashion, the marketers.

Bauerlein makes the sad but true point that adults who wish to influence the future can't pretend that all this MySpace/Gaia crap will let them absorb computer skills, let alone language and maths skills that will not only allow these kids to get a job, but might help our country survive.

Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are, by Rob Walker

Interesting but not groundbreaking book on consumerism as identity creation. I think James Twitchell covers this area better, but still, a tasty read anyway. In fact, Walker spent quite a lot of time quoting Twitchell and Paco Underhill, which I guess is inevitable when crossing such well travelled territory.

Walker did delve a little more into some kind of underground/pseudounderground consumer niches, like the sneaker freaks, etc, and the influence these subgroups have is pretty incredible. Still, it was nothing I hadn't read or known before. I guess I wouldn't really pass it on to a friend who I thought would be interested in this stuff- I would, however, recommend Twitchell's Living It Up: Our Love Affair With Luxury and his Lead Us Into Temptation: The Triumph of American Materialism without hesitation.

Deadly Persuasion: Why Women and Girls Must Fight The Addictive Power of Advertising, by Jean Kilbourne

Another solid and interesting book by Kilbourne on the way women are represented in media. Solid, not thrilling.

In fact, in this book, at least, I felt a little frustrated with her insistence on bringing her own experiences and addictions into it- while much of the media and advertising she discusses is obviously damaging, I can't help but feel that the men and boys targeted by these same companies are in many ways equally vulnerable to ugly manipulation.

When an ad for vodka (or perfume, or shoes or handbags or whatever) shows a man behaving aggressivley towards a woman (and there are many bizarre examples of that she highlights in the book), it's not just the woman who might get a weird idea about that image- especially as these ads are usually in women's magazines, so a guy flippping through it would be doubly hard pressed to understand what was going on. If it's scary and not cool, why is it in a Gucci ad, a guy might think, am I supposed to act that way? I'm just saying, it's not just women who are affected by fubar messages in media.

Maxed Out

This was a really fantastic documentary about American debt, both personal and national, and how corporations prey on the most disadvantaged members of society.

Disturbing, but really entertaining, it was so so well done, I watched it twice. Seriously, as soon as it was over, I watched the special features, and then went right back and watched the whole thing over again, it was that good. I even tried to talk Mr. Lexacat into watching it when he got home at midnight, and would have happily watched it again with him, but he wasn't into it.

So, it was that good. Yup.

The Year of The Horse, by Eric Hatch

Couldn't find a pic of the cover!
I read it because the blurbs on the back compared it to Mr Blandings, but I didn't think it was anywhere near that good. Still, it was fun and quick.

Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It, by Elizabeth Royte

Really good book. Despite it's title, it's really not one of those trendy 'little histories' (Like Salt: A World History, or Cod: A Biography Of The Fish That Changed The World).

This was more a look at the conflicts between public interest, corporations, and health and safety officials in an era of diminishing availability of clean water, which the UN says is a basic human right.

Some major nuggets:

"Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute estimates that the total energy required for every bottle's production, transport, and disposal is equivalent, on average, to filling that bottle a quater of the way with oil."

"Unless cities invest more to repair and replace their water and sewer systems, the EPA warns that nearly half of them will, by 2020, be in poor, very poor, or "life elapsed" status. The bill to take care of the drinking water part, to hell with the sewers, will run $390 billion, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers..."

Nestle's virtual takeover of Fryeburg, Maine is a frightening look at what might be lying ahead for American water, and some parts of the book made me gasp in fury.

Aside from the carbon dioxide pollution resulting from shipping Fiji Water 5000 miles just to get to San Francisco, "the bottling plant, in need of a steady power source, runs three diesel generators twenty-four hours a day...

Away from the rain forest, Fiji's urban areas are chronically water-stressed - not because there isn't enough water around, but because the infrastructure to deliver and protect it is inadequate...In 2007, half the nation didn't have access to clean water."

And, in a this-is-the-final-straw, Fuck Starbucks and the Gap (the whole RED thing makes me mad)

"(Starbucks) sells Ethos water, for $1.80 per half liter, with the copy line "Every bottle makes a difference." How much of a difference? A nickel for every bottle, up to $10 million over five years, goes to nonprofits that focus on water delivery, sanitation, and hygeine. To reach the goal of $10 milion, Starbucks will have to sell forty million bottles of water a year - water trucked from springs in Baxter, California and Hazelton, Pennsylvania - leaving behind $350 million in revenue when all is said and done."

This was an excellent book. I think I enjoyed The Blue Death:Disease, Disaster and the Water We Drink more, because the municipal water systems' crumbling infrastructure is so much more vivid and visible, but this was great. Highly recommended!

Killing Us Softly, Volume 3

Jean Kilbourne talks about images of women in advertising and how screwed up it all is. It was a bit boring, but probably only because I've read her fantastic book Can't Buy My Love:How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel so many times that I've kind of got the idea by now.

Branded: Personal Identity Through Consumer Products

Very interesting movie- this time directed at marketing students, rather than critics, which gave it a whole new flavor.
There were a couple of guys in it who I really don't know how they sleep at night- they had a brand, with no products yet, but they were raising money on the idea that once they established their "brand" and their "targets", they could sell nearly anything. I hated them.
The CEO of Swatch was another major focus, and he had some very interesting things to say about his brand definition.
Coming as it did from the marketing side of things, it wasn't very critical of the idea that people define their identity through what they buy, but one of the commentators (who must have had a major Warhol fetish going) did talk about how back in his day, cool people wanted something unique, that wasn't a national brand name, and how the marketing machine has kind of jammed that.

Buying Into Sexy

Interesting CBC documentary on how tweens are handling what marketers call "age compression", which, to the rest of us, leads to the ever-charming "prostitot" or "kinderwhore" look.

Nothing really groundbreaking here, unless you hadn't heard it before, but some of the girls seemed so sad, and stupid, and so so clueless.

Bratz The Movie

This was unbelievably bad.

In every way possible, this movie was awful and wildly offensive. I cannot believe that adults made this knowing it was for children. How the hell do those people sleep at night?

At one point, this is the only example I'll give of the unspeakable manipulative sexist consumerizing nature of this crapfest, I promise, the four "best friends" (who are horrible to each other and are individually wretched people too) are all invited to their enemy's MTV Super Sweet 16 party. Now, not for one second do the girls think, hey, We don't like Meredith, and she hates us, so lets not go to her party. Nope. They go shopping for new outfits for the party. Ok, so moving on, Cloe, the blond, is sulking around unhappily as the other Bratz endlessly try on clothes. Finally she says something to the eeffect that she can't go to the party, as she doesn't have enough money to buy a new outfit. (Her mom is single, and a caterer, which of course leads to future humiliations). Instead of saying, Hey, Cloe, no one needs a new outfit for Meredith's party, lets go home and trade outfits around or whatever, or realizing that they all hate Meredith and not go, Sasha, the black girl, pulls out two "Gold Gift Certificates" (limitless? wtf?) and says "One from Mom and one from Dad- now who says divorce is bad? Now it's one for you and one for me!" So then Cloe is happy, and they shop.

Yeah. Yeah.

Christ it was incredibly bad.

OMG this is the best ever review on IMDB- this really spells it out.

"I'm 20... I haven't cried for any reason since I was 12, and this movie brought me to tears. Not from laughter, not sadness... it was SO bad, I had no emotions that could be connected to this film, and I just started crying because nothing else quite fit. If these people tried to perform like this two thousand years ago, they would have been stoned to death. The acting was so terrible, I think I lost my faith in mankind. The materialism in this movie was so... I can't even think of an adequate adjective to describe it... No wonder there are countries that want to see our way of life crumble... after seeing this movie, I almost agree with them.

It's so awful, no one could possibly lampoon this movie. It's too terrible to properly mock and satirize. I feel really terrible for the companies that sponsored this. They really lost out on this investment. The attempts at throwing in messages about individualism and inner strength would have worked, if there hadn't been the "be yourself, but dress fashionably to be accepted" message splayed across this film like roadkill. It's a good thing I didn't have any forks, or acetylene torches nearby... or I would have tried to stab/burn my brain out.

I seriously considered gnawing my own leg off several times, to escape watching this film. I actually lost the ability to breathe after about 40 minutes of this film... I eventually remembered how, but it took a while. Not good... My roommate has completely lost his mind... he asks questions like, if Darth Vader showed up at our door, should we hang out with him, and some remarks about hollowed out breasts and orange juice... he's completely lost his mind.

Don't watch this movie if you value your sanity!!! " LINK

The Lolita Effect, by M. Gigi Durham

Vey good book about the sexualization of young girls and the impact that marketing sexy to young girls can make on their futures. I'd say it was fantastic if I hadn't read it before, but I have, so it was kind of like, Yeah, I knew that, but if I hadn't known it already, I'd be filled with rage, you know what I mean?

The Gospel According to Larry, by Janet Tashjian

Wonderful YA. A guy writing an anonymous, anti-consumerist blog gets his world shaken up when his blog blows up into a national movement, complete with free festivals U2 plays at. Lovely character development, strange ending for me.

Parenting, Inc. by Pamela Paul

Fantastic book, impossible to put down. Great read about marketing to parents, and the shocking money in the 'parenting' sector of the economy. The only quibble I have with it was that it hardly addressed the other side of the coin- that there are parents who can barely afford to feed their children, while others fret about the latest luxury strollers.

The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart, by Bill Bishop

Normally, I think I would love this book, but it's another that took me an unearthly long time to finish, and i don't know how much is me and how much was it. Interesting look at how cluster demographics have come to redefine much of how we are targeted by marketers, politicians, churches, and how the niche-ifying of America is breaking down civic engagement. Kind of Bowling Alone with even more numbers, if you know what i mean.

Interesting stuff when you read it for the first time, and some very tasty nuggets about how Republicans were early adopters of some of these techniques (snagged from megachurches, who had snagged them from marketers!) and how that led to certain losses for Democrats. Ok, but I wouldn't really recommend it to someone who wasn't already into that stuff. "The Clustering of America" by Michael Weiss is a much better, if older book about the study and use of cluster demographics, "Latitudes and Attitudes: An Atlas of American Tastes, Trends, Politics and Passions" by the same author is even more fun, and "Bowling Alone" by Robert Putnam had such a big readership that I just don't think this one fits on the shelf. That sounds so much meaner than I meant it to come out.

So Yesterday, by Scott Westerfeld

So Yesterday.

Scott Westerfeld rules. Smart, consumer-aware YA fic. I love it how he took the entire cool hunting viral marketing thing and made it read as creepy as it is.

Leaving Simplicity, by Claire Carmichael

Pretty great YA book!

Set in a near future where corporations work with the Ads-4-Life Council to ensure that every citzen is a productive consumer, Barrett is a freak- he was raised on an isolated compound by a 'cult' who rejected consumer society for a life of almost Amish spareness.

When his uncle there dies, he must leave Simplicity for the Chattering World, where his condition as an advertising virgin makes him incredibly valuable to the marketers who study the psychology of persuasion- including his aunt, who heads the Ads-4-Life Council and is hoping for a major presidential appointment.

Taylor, Barrett's cousin has always had everything- but is she who she thinks she is?

An exciting story that leaves the reader with a heightened sense of awareness of how close we really are to this dystopia, and how far away simplicity truly is.