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Introduction

Ever since I was little, I was fascinated by the way that commercials work on TV. It wasn't always clear to me why people made them the way they did and so I wanted to know more about psychology. That's the reason I got into commercial design at highschool and later graphic design in Latvia Arts Academy.

It was only a few years ago, but so much has changed with the power of the internet. We have managed to make this thing that is smarter than us and now it's getting out of hand because we can't control it anymore.

It feels like it's time to rethink everything we know about manipulating people into buying and using our products and the way we structure our economy, because as long as a whale is worth more dead than alive and a person is worth more addicted to their screens and depressed than happy and self-sufficient, we are at big risk.

In this blog, I have looked at the beginning of people manipulation, the reasons we do it in an economy and the ways we are trying to make it all better.

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Conclusion

We are at the beginning of a change. Right now there's not only a huge change in our fisical climate, but also in our mental and economical climate. Every single detail, that we put out in the world as designers, needs to support that change for the better. We need to make sustainable and mindful products and tools without the cost of our mental stability.

As long as social media companies profit from addiction, depression, and division, our society will continue to be at risk.

\Center for Humane Technology\

The good thing is, there's a lot of smart people working on this and making progress every day. Let's be a part of that change!

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8. Good practice now

To conclude this research, I wanted to look at some of the resources that Center for Humane Technology has listed as positive and practical and analyse them by the experience and visual design.

https://signal.org

This is a messaging app that has the most privacy. Even Mark Zuckenberg has admitted to using it for private conversations. So it's safe. The app has few little design details that don't help to make it look modern. The picture sharing option isn't working properly and the video chats aren't the best quality. Some of this can certainly be because of the fact that they don't have the data on how people use it and so the design changes come slower. Over all, a simple and easy to understand platform.

VSCO focuses more on purely editing and sharing photos. The intricate editing studio that comes with the app makes it easier for users to edit their photos to their desire. The major difference between Instagram and VSCO is that there are no numbers on VSCO to track the interaction of the users' pictures. It's also a subscription based app so there are no adds.

Insight Timer has helped thousands of people cultivate peace of mind, improve sleep quality, and manage stress and anxiety. It is great for both beginners and practiced meditators, and TIME magazine voted it as one of the best meditation apps of the year! The app itself is very UX friendly and easy to navigate. They encourage making friends and communities. There are no ads. At any given time there's a simple access to donate to content creators that's not too demanding, but still inviting. That's a great alternative to subscription method.

The first text on their website is this: Unlike social media, there is no wasted time, no social comparisons and no likes! Connect with the most important people in your life, not the entire world.

I think that that explains why this app is different and positive.

Marco Polo gives you tone, context and certainty that your message was heard. It doesn't make you to be there at the exact moment when someone has sent you a message on snapchat. You also can see if someone is online and talk to them similar to walkie-talkies.

There's one thing that is in common within these apps and that is the fact that they are presenting themselves as tools instead of necessities. They're not trying to grab your attention and keep you in there for as long as possible. Instead, they are trying to serve you.

You are the client and they are the product. Not the other way around.

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7. Presentation by Tristan Harris and a folowing discussion

This video is highlighted at the Center for Humane Technology website. I advise you to watch the presentation yourself. Here I have my notes from the discussion that takes place afterwards.

Presentation begins at 14:44 it's 30min long and explais the vision that they have for the solution for this problem.

Here I have very simplistic notes of the conversation that Tristan was having. If you'd like to hear it in detail, you can find it in the video by following the time stamp.

🧑🏻‍🦰-Tristan's responce

🧔🏻👲🏻👱🏻‍♀️👨🏻... - different people asking questions

0:47:20 🧔🏻Do you feel like "the inside people" are willing to change and come forward?🧑🏻‍🦰it's exciting to see the Facebook employees write that letter. Jetting Facebook to react is now very realistic, because statisticly, getting a new employee is more expensive than changing to keep the existing one. 250 people signed that letter. And this is happening more and more.

0:53:10 🧔🏻what needs to happen for people to start a way to see how to change things? 🧑🏻‍🦰if we don't have a buisness models that help this thing, there is no way of dealing with this effectively. Just like with climate change, when we can measure and model the way and the time that the planet will collapse, we can start to model the human downgrading. And you can also do things right now. You can stop using unnecessary plastics and delete all your social media apps. There's nothing that the companies can do about it. But to make a bigger impact, you have to ban somethings like snapchat and explain why streaks are so toxic to children. And after that people will start to think what they are using in their apps. 🧑🏻‍🦰things that are changing right now in some places are banning of micro-targeting audiences. Their figuring out the way to migrate from one app to another just like in banks, when you take all your money and put it into a different bank, right now you can't do that with the old Facebook and a new, better one.

1:00:00 🧔🏻are you optimistic?🧑🏻‍🦰I feel like we are just getting started and I have no idea how long it will take, but there are so surprising and fast changes happening already. 1:07:35 👲🏻if we called this a public health issue, would it help? 🧑🏻‍🦰yes and that way we would forse companies to think about their footprint on people's psihes.

1:10:38 👱🏻‍♀️example: Netflix. It's a subscription based platform and over years you can see how they are working so it would be harder and harder for you to turn it off and I'm like "but I'm already a subscriber! To what end is this going?" Why do we do that?🧑🏻‍🦰when there was this transition from ordering DVD's to online streaming, people notices that our taste in movies change. Because you were ordering for your future self, but now you're watching as the present self. Decoupling attention from profit would solve the fact that platforms are competing for your attention. Netflix isn't figuring out the minimum amount of things they need to do so you wouldn't unsubscribe. Instead they are maxing out like there's no tomorrow. This CEO has seriously said that their biggest competitor is sleep... This needs to be regulated. We could atleast have different sectors. One for children, one for politics, some for shopping etc.

1:16:10 👨🏻we have a missing peace in this because we as humans don't for certain know what we want and need before we go into a system. What king of an answer does your approuch have to this? 🧑🏻‍🦰our values are distorted from the social media culture by always wanting attention and needing validation. A teenager influencer will say that their value is number of likes, because that equals money and more people watching because that gives them validation. That sounds like free will, when actually that is something that the culture has tought them to belive and want by the design choices that designers have made. So how many generations back do you want to go and have their values? 🧑🏻‍🦰 personally this is the biggest world problem I know.

1:25:30 👱🏼‍♂️we could score all the companies on, for example, their ecological footprint. Then the social platforms could make adds more expensive if the company has a bad footprint. This could be a way of valuing things differently. Bigger trasperency. 🧑🏻‍🦰challenge is that complexity of problem creating is faster than responding to them. Facebook algorithm can change every week.

1:32:0 🕵️🏻‍♂️we know what happens when you challenge big cooperations like oil and cole industry. How do you prepare for these challenges? 🧑🏻‍🦰what gives me hope is that it's unignorable. They don't let their own children use phones. This is a first person human experience issue. When we will have a clear articulation. We'll see changes taking place faster.

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6. What does balanced life look like?

Photo by Prateek Katyal on Unsplash

There are multiple articles on healthy social media habits. They list similar things that are quite logical and doable like these ones:

Limit your screen time

Be intentional whit what you want to see on the site and don't get lost

Take longer brakes from social media if you feel depressed or anxious

Don't use screens before bed

Avoid recording every good moment you have and instead live in the present

Surround yourself with positive people avoid anger and conflict

Seems simple right? But this takes so much more strength to do because social media has a lot of power and it's not that simple to ignore.

The sites and apps are designed to keep you there for as long as possible with bottomless scrolling and smart algorithms that know what you like.

They intentionally show more than one thing on the screen so it's easy to get lost for hours when you were just looking for one thing.

You might feel depressed from using too much of social media, but at the same time it's the only thing that makes you lough, so how do you turn it off?

When going to sleep, your brain is overstimulated by all the content that you have seen during the day, that it's hard to fall asleep so you just pick up your phone to pass the time, but end up doing that for 4 hours.

Enjoying a moment becomes extremely hard when you can imagine the content that this would make and all the great response to it. And it's even more difficult, if all of your friends are recording everything and you are the only one that isn't looking through a screen.

Lastly, in this pandemic, when you basically can't do anything with other people outside your home, social media is the best form of escape and gives the feeling of community... How do you say no to that?

So thes articles with "5 eAsy sTEpS tO hAvE a hEaltHy reLAtioNshIp wITh soCiaL mEdiA" don't work.

The problem lies with the design of our social media and less with the fact that we can't resist it. At the beginning of marketing (see the first post) they asked the same question we need to ask again now:

Is it wrong to give people what they want by removing their defences?

It's not like experts aren't aware of this. There are many people discussing the complicated nature of this problem. You can find many great discussions on a podcast called Your Undivided Attention. In this podcast from the Center for Humane Technology, co-hosts Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin expose how social media’s race for attention manipulates our choices, breaks down truth, and destabilizes our real-world communities.

If you don't want to watch the whole 9,5min interview, then you can watch 4,5min starting at 5:07

Center for Humane Technology also has a list of things to help you be more healthy with your social media use, but it's way more realistic. It offers similar solutions to other articles but with more recources to help you and looks more realisticly at these problems. You can read it here. They basically are taking this problem head on and doing it with a lot of thought and care.

There is progress being made every day with smart tech companies that redefine the way we are using technologies. Experts are constantly fighting to change law and policies to make social media platforms responsible for their impact on people etc.

It seems like we have made a "being" that is the internet and underestimated the power it has. We didn't know how easily we can be manipulated and now we are constantly worried not only for our children, that we know are more susceptible to manipulation that grownups, but also for us, because this "being" has the power to manipulate anyone. And we don't have a way to stop it or even controle it.

We have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and god-like technologies.

\E.O.Wilson, father of socioliology\

When listening to these experts talking, it's wonderful to see how they are still positive and believe that a healthy and productive technology can be achieved. But it always sends cold shivers down my spine when I realise how slow it all is moving, because people don't like change. I see the children growing up with phones basically glued to their faces and know that this new generation will grow up like that and we can only hope that the next one won't.

Right now all we can do is actively fight and resist with the hope that one day we will be able to stop.

I believe that it is our duty to educate ourselves not only as designers, but also as people on this topic and do something about it, because we are simply running out of time.

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5. Emotional regenerative economy

A poster by Estefania Loret de Mola

The way we see the existing linear economy applies not only to the material world, but also to our emotional worlds within. Especially now when social media markets of of our emotions and thoughts, the economic business model has become extremely personal. And it has the same problems that we can see in the material world.

We use our resources like our energy and mind to work for more and more growth. This happens without thinking about the consequences that it has on us. Just like we use oil to make plastic that later, just pollutes our waters, we use the power of our minds to focus on material things that we don't even need and then we don't take care of our minds because we are too tired to even consider that. We work to buy more and more things, we buy more and more things to be able to replace more and more things we no longer want. It's a vicious cycle that never stops.

I've heard this saying in many motivational YouTube videos that you turn on to get yourself excited for a workout or for studying that shows different people working and fighting trough their obstacles:

Don't stop when you are tired. Stop when you are done!

Well the problem with linear economics is that you are never done. It's endlessly growing. That's why the paste of our society is so fast and more and more people simply burn out. We don't value rests, we only value success. But what success can be worth if you have to sacrifice your health to get it. Furthermore, since there is never enough success, all the accomplishments become irrelevant after a while because someone else has made more progress than you.

Poet and essayist Alison Hawthorne Deming writes about biomimicry in a more emotional context in an article called How Does Nature Sustain Communities? It looks at communities of animals, our modern communities and how they're merging again because of climate change. There are many more eyeopening articles about design and nature at asknature.org

Biomimicry can not only help our material design, but also our emotional world. We can learn from other animals, our ancestors and even our organs to understand how to live in a sustainable way, without deserting to a hidden capitalist-hating community on an island.

The most valuable skill today is to balance your life in harmony. Our jobs are getting more demanding, our work always needs to be relevant to the current situation that is ever changing, but at the same time, our minds and bodies need time and peace to be healthy... It's a hard puzzle to solve.

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4. How does regenerative economy work?

In this article you can read in more detale about why we need an economy that can regenerate itself and how we can get there. I'll sum up the main points.

Poor countries are too poor to be green!

It’s a story that once appeared to be backed up by data and that we all have heard before. And this goes not only for huge businesses like countries, but also small start up businesses. There's this believe that the linear and never ending growth, that you can read more about in the previous post, will eventually clean up the pollution and waste that it has produced. It doesn't work that way.

"Rather than wait for growth to clean up the environment — because it won’t — it is far smarter to create economies that can restore and renew the cycles of life."

\Kate Raworth\

The linear economy simplified looks like this

It is inherently flawed. There is no thought about reusing. So to think that your business will once be successful enough to go green is delusional.

This instead is what it should look like:

Regenerative design embraces biosphere stewardship and recognizes that we have a responsibility to leave the living world in a better state than we found it. It calls for creating enterprises whose core business helps to reconnect nature’s cycles, and that gift as much as they can.

“We are still acting like toddlers expecting Mother Nature to clean up after us.”

\Janine Benyus\

Many of the solutions lie in a relatively new field of science called Biomimicry. It basically uses nature as a teacher and mentor for all our design problems. We like to forget that we are newcomers on this planet and everything has been built before by nature. It knows how to use resources in a sustainable way and with the best outcomes. We just need to look closer and take note.

This TED talk shows many great examples of people using Biomimicry for modern problems. These types of inventions, I believe, can make the utopic sites that we always hope to see one day, like the one on the top of this post.

But the real transformation comes from a new understanding of value.

“There is no wealth but life,” as art critic and social thinker John Ruskin wrote in 1860. Only one form of wealth persists through time and that is the regenerative power of life, powered by the sun.

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3. The lie of never ending growth

The economic system that was invented in 1930 is all about growth. The only way to go in business is up. We adopted this strategy with all that we have and have been using it for almost a century now. So why is it a lie? Kate Raworth made a great example by comparing our ideology of growth by showing a straight line upwards with the way that nature makes progress. Progress doesn't always mean growth. It's not always going upward. It is growing up and then being smart and strong. Our economics need a roof, they need a boundary of growth. And only within boundaries, creativity can strive.

These are screenshots from Kates TED talk about economics in 21st century.

What harm Never Ending Growth has done to name it something bad, like a lie? It has carelessly used up most of earths resources to make products that we don't need, it has made holes in our ozone layer and polluted the oceans. It's marketing off of our desires, identities, and now our own children and not caring about the consequences. This is greatly displayed in Netflix film "Social Dilemma". It is possible to grow, but not infinite, because nature doesn't have infinite resources... so it's a lie. We are the last generation to have a real chance of turning things around. We can adopt smart and sustainable economics like the Doughnut Economics written by Kate Raworth.

Whatch her TED talk to understand how this can be done.

You might have a question after reading this:

How does this relate to design?

We mostly research, think and create to reach a goal. Design industry, just like any other, is inseparable from our economics. If we want to be responsible designers and do things that don't harm us in the long run, we need to think sustainably and regeniretevly and stop only thinking about linear growth. This is quite literally no longer a choice. We don't have much time until the harm we have done to nature plays back at us.

This picture shows where we are now in the economic doughnut. There are too many people that don't have any resources and too many resources wasted.

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2. How modern marketing was born? pt.2

In the 60's people started to rival against this kind of manipulation.

"There is a policemen in all our heads and he must be destroyed"

Was a phrase that they used in their protests. They physically attracted companies that made automatic weapons as well as the ones who manipulated human minds with marketing. "I want to live a life that isn't based on materialistic values and yet the whole system of government and the economy of America is based on profit, on personal greed and selfishness so that in order to be human in order to love each other and to be equal with each other and not place each other in roles, we have to destroy the kind of government that keeps us asserting our positive values of life."

Figura 1, Oil on canvas 40x50cm, 2017, ELEANOR MCCAUGHEY worn from an exibition called "There is a policemen in all our heads and he must be destroyed".

This was no success because the government released the police and national guards to stop the protesters. Because they couldn't fight the state, they decided to take a different approach. Instead of killing the policemen in the head, they wanted to get inside the mind and remove it. Start with yourself. And so the personal became political. Without changing the personal, you didn't stand a chance to win the political.

This notion nowadays also is very obvious, in my opinion. We still live in an age where the biggest change that you can make is within yourself.

They turned to the ideas of Wilhelm Reich. He was dead by then. "Esalen Institute", that was dominated by Fritz Perls, helped people to take ownership of who you are and how you act and feel. Creating ways to express themselves. Own your freedom.

They were very successful and more and more people wanted to join and do these one-weekend transformational trips. The Esalen Institute worked on social issues as well like racism. This was such a hard topic that they doidn't succseed. They even turned to nuns that acsepted this experiment trying to appear modern. After the experiment 300 nuns (more than a half of convent) broke their wows. Six months later, the convent closed the doors. All that was left was small group of nuns that were radical lesbian nuns.

In the late 60s people were very focused on searching for themselves and it had an impact on the economy. Example: students stopped buying life insurance after University because that's something a person who plans for the future does. If you live in the moment, you don't need it. That's where the

This product expresses me and who I am as an individual

was born. Before that, everything was the same for everyone. So the advertisers wanted to make new focus groups but the new expressive individualists didn't take part in them. Also, making expressive things meant making variety of them and American mass production didn't work like that. Earhart figured out a way to help people become themselves in mass groups. And do they peeled off layer after layer until they came to a recognition that everything's meaningless and that gives huge freedom because you can only create something from nothing. Be what you want to be. Earhart said that only one self matters and not the society. And so a new culture was born. The idea that people can be happy within themselves and changing the society was pointless. In 10 years from 70s to 80s this idea of having to start with yourself spread across the America. Stanford research institute of California helped the capitalism (organisations and companies) to get inside the peoples heads and give them what they want - self expression. They designed a long questionnaire that was meant to help put people in categories. People LOVED it and they had a lot of data. Now the institute made several categories for people to fit into and that gave companies a way to market their products.

Selling a lifestyle

Then this took a turn as in 1980 Ronald Reagan ran for president and was convinced by his advisors that taking in consideration the individualist groups was the way to win the election. He picked a speach that was called "let the people rule". A part from the speach "and I envision leadership in taking government off your backs and turning you loose."

This was very radical, the press and everyone else was very sceptic except for the individual people. At first some scientist didn't believe that this could work because the individualist didn't care for the government and would never vote Republican or right, but Reagans team believed it would work. And it did. That showed the power of this approach - social class, age and other democratics were not nearly as important as these new categories.

Ronald Reagan was the president who ultimately made denial of compassion respectable all because of this individualist thinking. Now caring about those in need and only about yourself. "You've worked hard for your money! You shouldn't have to feel guilty about refusing to throw it away on people who chose to be homeless and choose not to work" he said it in a way that doesn't sound harsh.

They now used focus groups for exploring the thoughts and feelings of people to invent new ranges of products, witch would allow those groups to express what they believed was their individuality. Also computers were starting to work so making small amounts of products was no longer a problem and mass production disappeared. Now there isn't a market that can fill the needs of people and there are no more definite needs.

Now there is a market based on self expression that has infinite needs in infinitely different ways.

The 4 Consumer Types where defined and are still being used today.

Mainstreamers – They seek security

Aspirers – They are chasing status

The Succeeder – They value control, they are captains of their own destiny

The Explorer – They seek experiences, risks and discovery

To learn more about this, visit this site.

Matthew Freud started to glamourase celebraties and using them es leavers of marketing in journalism. He said where you have to mention the product, how you have to talk about it, how big it should be in the pictures and the celebrities had no choice. In TV: they would put on sexy shows before serious programs that the elite thought people should watch.

In this magazine page you can see the celebrity advertising Pizza Hut in many different ways. Nowadays this would be too much and this person wouldn't be taken seriously.

When Bill Clinton was presented, he couldn't do what he had promised the public before which is cutting off their taxes and not giving anything to the pore (similar to R. Reagen). So he turned to Dick Moriss - one of the most ruthless American political strategists.

The only way to get people back was to forget the ideology and treat politics as consumer, business

"politics need to be as responsive to the whims and needs of the market place as business is. And it needs to be as sensitive to the bottom line which is profiting (or in this case Votes) as business is. Instead of treating them as targets, you treat them as owners, instead of treating them as something that you can manipulate, you treat them as something you need to learn about. You need to learn what they want and move yourself to accommodate it."

\Dick Moriss\

So they collected more data just like marketing did with questionnaires. Asking about personal feelings and little things and almost nothing about politics. Clinton took up hobbies that his voters had. Like hunting and other.

All to get re-elected. It was very successful. Clinton's people called to suburban voters about specific questions on his policies and asked their opinion. And they used it to shape the policies. He ended the welfare system.

All to get re-elected. It was very successful. Clinton's people called to suburban voters about specific questions on his policies and asked their opinion. And they used it to shape the policies. He ended the welfare system.

In conclution, Edward Bernays privately didn't believe that a true democracy can be possible. He thought that humans were not to be trusted. This notion mostly came from his uncle. He thought that the masses should never have the full control of their lives and

Consumerism is the way to give the illusion of control while allowing the elite to manage the society.

This quote I found in the comment section under the last part of these series. I think it sums up what we all are thinking about this in modern terms:

Social media today is basically a 24/7 focus group about everything, all the time. A well oiled machine that not only identifies people's thoughts and feelings towards everything, but creates and manages their thoughts and feelings about everything as well. I think we've lost, folks.

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1. How modern marketing was born?

Why is this question importaint for graphic designers?

When designing anything, the first thing you do is research the people for whom you are designing. The same is done for any kind of buisness marketing. This research wasn't always the way it is now and people were different as well.

Why do people feel so isolated in the best age for comunication? Why do we feel like there is never enough stuff and nothing to wear?

There are answers for these questions and a lot of them can be found in the 2002 British television documentary series The Century of the Self by filmmaker Adam Curtis.

In the first of four episodes, the story of the relationship between Sigmund Freud and his American nephew, Edward Bernays is told. Bernays invented the public relations profession in the 1920s and was the first person to take Freud's ideas to manipulate the masses. His uncle Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis. Before him people knew little about the unconscious mind. He ultimately thought that humans are dangerous and have uncontrollable dark desires that can be very destructive if let loose. His nephew Edward Bernays learned from his research and figured out a way to manipulate the unconscious mind of the masses.

His first big client was George Hill, the president of the American tobacco cooperation. There was a taboo about women smoking in public because it symbolised a penis and so was seen as vulgar. Edward made rich debutantes smoke dramatically in a parade. He made the press call it "torches of freedom".

He concluded that adding emotional association with a product, you could make people act irrationally. Nowadays this seems like common sense that everyone is aware of but it was Edward that first figured it out.

He was the one to originate this idea that you will feel better if you have something. Until then they advertised only by showing how practical it is. People didn't buy things that they didn't need. Maybe if you were rich, you would buy something just for fun, but for the average person this wasn't the case. Nowadays it's hard to imagine living in a society like that.

Edward Bernays created the American consumer.

He bagan the product placement in movies, actor advertising in magazines, making cars as male sexual symbols, the idea of clothing as self expression etc. This made people question democracy. That's where consumerism became the new leader. The thing that ended Edward was a huge stock market crash. He helped banks to promote that these types of things like market craches were in the past. No one had money anymore, no one could buy things they didn't need and so Edward's work was over.

Freud said that humans are animals and so democracy can't be trusted. That helped Adolf Hitler. His propaganda minister took ideas from Edwards books (that he said as warnings) and used them in Germany.

After WW2 sociologists (this was a new science) started to develop focus groups led by Ernest Dichter. He's known as the "father of motivational research." Dichter pioneered the application of Freudian psychoanalytic concepts and techniques to business — in particular to the study of consumer behavior in the marketplace. He evem marketed the Barbie doll using a childrens focus group. Already at that time people were questioning - is it wrong to give people what they want by removing their defences?

At that time the war had just stopped and politicians and planners came to believe Freud's underlying premise - that deep within all human beings were dangerous and irrational desires and fears. They were convinced that it was the unleashing of these instincts that had led to the barbarism of Nazi Germany. To stop it ever happening again they set out to find ways to control this hidden enemy within the human mind.

Those in power believed that the only way to make democracy work and create a stable society was to repress the savage barbarism that lurked just under the surface of normal American life.

And advertising was a great way to do it. And they didn't stop there. Doctors used barbaristic methods for people to make them "fit the mold" and "be normal". They used huge amounts of LSD and electric shock that essentially lead the patients to a wiped out vegetable state and the goal was to rewrite the human mind by then giving them the "right kind" of information. This didn't work and resultedonly in memory loss and ability to repeat the frase "I am at ease with myself". That's how scientists understood that there is way more to human minds that they thought to be.

Continue reading in the next post ->