That Gillette ad

So that Gillette ad. I have thoughts.

I think it does matter that this exists to sell razor blades. It says volumes about our culture that corporations and brands are consciously, openly making these bids to shape that culture; and that at the end of the day the motivation behind that is not to make the world better, but to sell more razor blades. (Or, at best, to make the world better *while* selling more razor blades.) I think it's really important for me to remain conscious of that motivation even when their message happens to align with my own beliefs, because at the end of the day if they'd done the math and decided that this ad campaign wouldn't result in selling more razor blades, this ad campaign would not exist. (I take a little bit of hope from the fact that they did predict that it would sell more razor blades, even as I marvel at the realization that I trust Proctor & Gamble's market research department as much or more than I trust public polling.)

I think it's unnerving that advertising has slowly frogboiled its way from "we have this product, and these are its superior qualities, therefore you should buy our product" to "here is a philosophical or cultural ideal that you support, therefore you should buy our product." I think it's a little frightening how much more skilled we / they have gotten at producing these packets of cultural propaganda, compared to the ridiculous PSAs of my youth ("This is your brain on drugs" etc) or the even more ridiculous government-sponsored "educational" films that preceded those and now serve mostly as fodder for MST3K shorts.

I don't really know what to make of my impression that the primary vehicle, the generally trusted source, for transmission of cultural ideals seems to have migrated, over decades or centuries, from the church to the government to the multinational corporation. (I could make the case that this one aspect is an improvement: corporate culture is more democratic than the others, you can choose a different product much more easily than you can choose your government or your religion. I could also make the case for despair that we've individually been reduced to expressing our ideals via the selection of the correct brand of razor blades, and that voting with my dollars probably has more real-world effect than voting with a ballot.)

I'm very very uncomfortable with the fact that I just teared up over an ad for razor blades, and that my next purchase of razor blades is going to be so heavily influenced by something that has fuck-all to do with the razor blades or their quality. But I also kinda wish I hadn't been buying Gillette by default all along anyway, because then I'd be able to send my small signal to them that it worked, by switching to their brand.