Comment by _DeadFred_
1 month ago
You are pitting your randomly acquired will power and your in large part unintentional stumbling through life against all of human kind's psychology knowledge, against billions of dollars spent on advertising and advertising research. That is at this point tens maybe hundreds of millions of years of acquired human knowledge how to manipulate you versus your very randomly acquired 'will power'.
Have you seen the quotes coming out of the richest/most powerful companies on the planet? These are very intentional impacts by companies more powerful than entire nations.
I don't think 'but your willpower' stands a chance if you want to be connected to the modern world.
So if you are helpless in a world dominated by the billionaires and the clerics of psychological research, what's the hope for the average person? Should we just accept our fate and waste away in endless Instagram feeds, alcohol, drugs, gambling and all forms of addiction? These need to be managed at society level, banning or taxing goods. But no amount of regulation can compensate for someone determined to destroy himself. So yeah, it's your fault. But it's also society's fault. And at the end of the day the most effective thing you have is your choice.
>So yeah, it's your fault
This framing is doing so much PR work for the alcohol/tobacco/social media companies of the world. Effectively removes any blame from the corporations making billions of dollars off harming our societies.
It doesn't, or it shouldn't, but you are right, they subvert any responsibility the individual has so they can offload their responsibility into them. But my mistake here is not realising that people under abstinence doesn't behave as if they had any choice. In any case, my original comment was about social media only, which I think has a lot of psychological pressure over the individual, but doesn't have the pharmacological component.