Virtue Vampires

I like going to parkruns. It's fun, it gets me out the house, it's exercise, and it's social. The only competitor is oneself - or, in the case of the walkers, no-one at all. Everyone is welcome. People are largely polite, upbeat and talkative.

A few weeks ago, a young boy had his hand out at the side of the track, wanting to touch hands with all the runners. I didn't notice him until I'd gone past, and looked back when I heard his disappointment. I was going to aim for a personal best, but instead I doubled back, high-fived him, and resumed my run. He was happy. That was clearly more important than running a personal best, and it was merely the right thing to do. It hopefully also resonated with the other runners who witnessed it and brightened their day.

On the other hand, I've occasionally overtaken others who have blanked me at the end when I've tried to chat with them. I've also been overtaken by people who then cut me up, blocking my path, causing me to fall behind further. They must know what effect their actions would have. In both cases, their goal is to win, and the purpose of that goal is ego. They are looking for an ego trip, and their cover - the pretence - is running.

Being social is a virtue. An anti-social runner in a Parkrun isn't a parkrunner. They're an imposter. They're not part of the event, they're there despite it. Vice masquerading as virtue. More dramatically, evil masquerading as good.

Parkrun is merely one example of many. It's not just about egomaniacs and running events. Take anti-naturists, for example, people at naturist events who just want to get their kit off. The purpose of naturism is to be closer to nature, and sometimes that involves removing clothing. That's virtuous. Nudists just like removing their clothing - meaning that there must be another reason other than naturism. Whatever the reason, it can't be virtuous. It has to be a perversion of some sort. And it's that perversion that degrades the ethos of the naturist event, and the implicit trust and goodwill that the other people have in it.

The key problem with such covert malfeasance is that it corrupts the event for everyone else. It sucks the life out of it. As more people abuse the event, whatever it is, people lose trust in it, and stop going, which accelerates its virtuous demise. Eventually, it gets a different reputation, which attracts more of the same.

Imagine a row of houses full of nice people. You just need a few unpleasant families to move in, which causes the nice people to move elsewhere, and the only people willing to move in are more unpleasant families. Eventually, bit by bit, you have a row of houses full of unpleasant people, forever: The reverse (back to being full of nice people) never happens. Bad is dominant; good recessive.

These sorts of people need a name, and I advocate virtue vampires: Parasitic people who suck the virtuous nature out of a genuinely good activity, event or place, for their own selfish purposes, at the sake of everyone else.

Tolerance is not always good in itself: Sometimes, it's the complete opposite. We need to stop tolerating virtue vampires. It's only us, the people we care about and goodness itself who will suffer if we don't. Good does not necessarily have to be recessive. Resistance does not have to be violent or malicious.

"Regular" Products

We all know marketing is at best sociopathic, at worst evil. Its aim is to get you to part with your money. It doesn't care whether you can afford, or whether the product is what you really want. Its sole focus is to exploit the vulnerable, subliminal, primal part of the brain that we all have, which intrinsically trusts the information it is exposed to. You're not aware of it consciously. You might even think you're above it. But you are nevertheless being brainwashed. Your thought processes are being conquered by stealth. Not all of the attempts will work, but some definitely will. You can't help it - it's human nature.

This marketing misdirection is akin to how magic tricks work: Your conscious mind is being kept busy in one place with (usually) fun things to do, while the malicious part hacks away at your subconscious. It's a sleight of hand.

Remember the Caesar cat food ads in the 1990s? The tagline was "If you love him, give him Caesar." 

"Aww," says your conscious mind, in response to the cute little cat playing around on the screen.

"That means if I don't feed my cat Caesar, that means I don't love him," says your subconscious mind, picking up on the unspoken but logical subtext of the information you're being told.

That despicable slogan is consigned to the past, thank god. Alas, there are far more pervasive examples still in use, as I'll get into shortly.

Repurposing words is a great way of conditioning someone's mind. I'm reminded of George Orwell's novel Animal Farm, where wannabe dictators attempt to distort the meaning of 'equality':

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

Of course, we know that equal means everything is the same. Here, they try to change this using a corrupt pseudo-logic, to fit their own nefarious ends, and at the expense of other characters. It attempts to confuse into submission the target audience, just like the Caesar cat food ad did.

Another example in marketing is where a marketer says a product is "worth" a certain amount of money. In reality, of course, a product is only worth what you are willing to pay for it, which in turn depends on how useful or attractive it is to you. A pack of cigarettes is worth something to a smoker, but it's completely worthless to a non-smoker. It's worth less than zero to someone who's quit smoking (and, more broadly, for society in general), for obvious reasons.

What they mean, of course, is that it costs a certain amount of money. But they've invaded the sanctity of the word "worth" - and, if you didn't notice that, it stops your rational mind from considering whether the product is a good price. And why would you consider such a thing? You've already been told what it's worth.

The message was intended to go straight to your unquestioning, subconscious mind. The intended result is that the conscious mind becomes confused and less likely to question. So next time someone tells you in a shop that a TV is worth £1,200, you might want to consider replying with "no it isn't, it's only worth what I'm willing to pay for it. You mean it costs £1,200." Preferably in a loud voice, so everyone else is brought to the realisation of the great con.

But the subject of this blog entry, simply because it's so ubiquitous and thus more damaging than the others, is the reinvention of the word "regular" to refer to product sizes. You can't get a normal-sized coffee, or an average-sized portion of fries. Not just because it sounds less impressive, but also (and mainly) because the word "regular" has additional connotations: It's telling you that the everyday bloke on the street buys this shit on a regular basis. You're not supposed to just buy this once, or even multiple times, you need to buy this often.

Again, you weren't meant to notice this consciously: It speaks to the subconscious mind. Your conscious mind simply rationalises it away as 'modern language,' or 'cool', or 'an American thing'. You might dismiss it as "just marketing", as if it's nothing to worry about. If so, you've lost the battle against mind control: Once unchecked, evil grows ad infinitum. It isn't just your battle, it's a societal battle, and you've decided to aid the enemy by normalising - and, indeed, regularising - their actions.

Congratulations, marketers, your evil language abuse has worked, and the masses are obeying. You could say that the word "regular" literally is the new normal.

If this all sounds alarmingly dangerous, it is. Its ultimate aim is to turn people into mindless zombies that have lost the ability to question things rationally or look at things from an outside perspective. And it isn't just some marketing, but all marketing that is driven by it. God knows what the ultimate result of this will be to people's minds in a few generations' time. Good luck to them. I think they'll need it.