#2 Kroger Plus

            In “They Say,” Douglass Rushkoff describes how corporations use advertising techniques to control the way people think so that in turn they can control people’s behavior. People have a natural instinct for detecting when someone is trying to push something on us, weather that something is a product or opinion or a type of behavior. For someone who is trying to control us, his or her first step is to confuse our natural instinct for detection. The controller comes up with a new strategy to change our thought or behavior until the strategy stops working, and then the controller strikes up a new strategy. As technology advances, new strategies are used and it becomes harder for people to pick up on cues that excite our natural instinct.

One example, Rushkoff writes, “They invented the personalized discount card at the local supermarket, which is used to create a database of our purchasing decisions. This information is bought and sold without our knowledge to direct marketers, who customize the offers filling our mailboxes to match our individual psychological profiles.” (Rushkoff 8).  This fact is absolutely amazing to me. Not because it doesn’t make sense, it makes complete sense, but because it never occurred to me that my Kroger plus card had more of a purpose than just to give me discounts on my groceries. I feel as though I should have suspected something was up when I signed up for the card in the checkout line. Without a second thought, I automatically signed my name and information to the paperwork once I was promised continual discounts as long as I was a member.

Knowing this information makes me feel more cynical towards the world, and the thought kind of saddens me. I don’t like feeling as though I’m being taken advantage of. I don’t like that the behavior and ideals of the majority are being controlled to keep consumer corporations in power. For these reasons, I will be more aware in the future.