Memories of the 28th Century

It is amazing how gullible humans are. This morning I noticed a guy rolling cigarettes with filters, and I almost laughed. That guy can almost be forgiven, because he was only about thirty years old, but filter cigarettes weren't popular until the 1950's, when they were hyped as safer. While most of the filters do remove some tars, they don't remove enough to actually make cigarettes safer, and there were some filters that were made of asbestos, which causes asbestosis and cancer. The marketing hype became so ingrained that people still smoke filter cigarettes, because they think they are safer.

But that's only one of the great many examples of people buying the sizzle instead of the steak. Consider Apple Computer. That company should have been liquidated decades ago, but they started selling hype, and the inferior and overpriced equipment that Apple produced started selling even more. Read this article "5 Marketing Tools Apple Exploits To Build The Hype" http://www.fastcompany.com/3001650/5...its-build-hype . I especially like "They create a passionate brand community of fans who identity with Apple's brand values." And what does it tell you about people if they are passionate about a culture of hype? But it was clear back in the 1980's that Apple was to be avoided, because they concentrated on proprietary hardware and software, while the Wintel computer architecture was open to all. As a result Wintel computers were faster, cheaper, and generally more convenient. In the mid-1990's Apple heated up their hype, and they are still in business, and their products are still overpriced and lower quality. I wish I'd bought the stock, but I am glad that I never wasted money on their products.

But I favor equal opportunities. That Microsoft was a heroic opponent of Big Blue in the 1980’s didn’t prevent it from becoming the Evil Empire after it eclipsed Big Blue. The relative simplicity and ease of use that typified early versions of Windows became history after Microsoft became the 800 pound gorilla, but no one mentioned to the people who ran Microsoft, so they didn’t realize that their bloated software wasn’t very good. If you were to look for the best Windows ever, then you would download some version of Linux. If Linux goes mainstream, then some company probably will follow the path blazed by Microsoft.

Searching the internet for other examples of hype is interesting, because one person's hype is someone else's beautiful advertising copy. One interesting looking site that came up is http://createhype.com/ , which is described as "Create Hype is a community of women entrepreneurs who want to promote their business effectively with actionable marketing tips."
Then there's http://creativemms.com/interactive-m...building-hype/ "Interactive Marketing at Its Finest: Building Hype." There was something about Justin Bieber on this site, and that reminded me of people created purely by hype. It is possible that some of the people are nothing but hype. I don't know if Justin Bieber can do anything, but I have never seen any evidence that he is anything except hype, but he is far from being alone in that.

Another kind of product where the hype has been selling is electric cars. There are reasons for electric automobiles to exist, but they are much too expensive, and the weight of the machines makes them rather inefficient. Here in the U.S.A. and in some other countries the government subsidies are the only way that most people can afford them. If the subsidies were eliminated, then so would the electric cars. On a practical basis, electric cars aren't worth the money.

Then there is the hype about vaccinations. Apparently the official position is that life will be better if all children to be vaccinated against measles. Considering the level of immunity gained (quite little) and the severity of the disease (quite mild) and the mortality rate (very low) there isn't much reason for anyone to be vaccinated against measles, but the government medical types seem to think that it is a major priority. They are making measles equal with smallpox, which has a mortality rate of about 30%. This appears to be pure hype. If I were selling measles, then I'd feel rather flattered. If the pro-vaccination people were actually doing satire, then it would make more sense, but they claim to be serious and then continue to hype measles as a major disease and vaccination as a major issue.

Then there were and continue to be weather forecasts. There was a storm a few weeks ago that was hyped as the storm of the century; it was supposed to drop between two and three feet of snow. It left about a foot, enough to be an inconvenience, but it shouldn't have required shutting everything down. Meteorologists make over hyping weather a standard activity. Looking at it from their point of view it is understandable, but there are people who don't understand that it is just hype, and that cutting it back by fifty percent before taking action is a very good idea. This is another of the flavors of hype that people should have learned about sometime ago.

And I just thought of the biggest collection of hype that has come down the pike ever, the marketing of the medical industry. The medical industry has changed dramatically in the last few decades. The practice of medicine used to be about curing and preventing preventable or curable disease, but it has recently been converted to "healthcare", and it seems to want to require everyone to use a collection of treatments and medicines that will maximize the profits of the medical insurance companies, hospital chains, and major drug manufacturers. The more I think about it the worse it looks. Remember how Cholesterol was demonized for a few decades, but recently cholesterol was restored to its position as something that is necessary for animal life? There are more such mistaken condemnations that will be reversed.

Try to keep a healthy skepticism about everything.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestay...nother-record/