Feel Good Inc.
The best lies have an element of truth to them. Feel Good Inc.’s most effective and toxic lie is an emotive one: “you’ll be happy if you just get (quick fix) X.” The lie here is the conflation between transitory pleasure and enduring satisfaction. In fact, if Feel Good Inc. can get you on a hedonic treadmill (a boom then crash cycle of pleasure) they’ve captured their audience in an addictive cycle that has no end.
To make the siren’s call of the hedonic treadmill message even more attractive we are subtly insulted and diminished: neg’ed. Sometimes this is obvious — don’t be repulsive (by being old, different, etc.) — but usually it is subtle through engineering a “Fear of Missing Out.” The more Feel Good Inc. can make us feel insecure, uncertain and dispirited, the more effective their messages are [contrast].
But wait, there’s more! The final, cruel, insult of this approach is the use of “Cruel Optimism” to make it the consumer’s fault for not being happy with the results. You are the failure, not what was sold. And what’s more, that sets up the next pitch/sale.
Today
We are in a horrid system where there is a massive incentive to abuse our short term survival (attraction and aversion) systems and feedback loops for the (financial) benefit of others. The most obvious examples of this are marketing and advertising, but this has extended into product and service design. An easy example of this is the (junk) food industry and its shadow siblings the fitness/diet industry, but the transition of the information industry to (fake) news is potentially the most catastrophic for society due to its reach and low latency.
We appear to be at a tipping point where the corporate (consumption) model that has provided such remarkable benefits to society looks like it is about to destroy it. Perverse incentives indeed. The only question is whether we will allow this system of abuse to continue?