Re: Product placement in written science fiction now available

: "Ray Cunningham" <raycun@xxxxxxxxx>
: If the author is 'programming' you to do something, and you think that
: something has nothing to do with the story, does it really matter
: whether they've been paid to include the extraneous material or do it
: because they're obsessed? If you can't tell as a reader, how can the
: distinction matter?

Right. The point is, you have to read critically and watch for
attempts to sneak things into your meme set, whether the author is
being paid for it or not. So there's really no extra effort required
to deal with "product placement". I mean, whether James Bond drives
a BMW this movie because BMW paid the producers, or because the director
thought BMW's are the be-all end end-all of cool cars, makes no odds,
you still need to ignore all the "ooooh, shiny!" buttons they are
attempting to push.

On the other hand, one might suppose there's a spam problem; that
instances of attempted button-pushing would increase beyond ambient
background like annoying emails increase beyond ambient background
(ie, there are usenet/email kooks, and then there are organized
commercial annoyance-generators).

But back on the first hand, product placement has a natural cap on such
volume escalations; sending more spam costs you more time, but watching
a movie critically takes the same amount of time no matter now many products
are shown therein, and the producers can't reach out and interrupt you
and keep you from doing something more productive. (though there are
other routes of escalation that could get *really* annoying)

So. All in all, I really don't find product placement
to be all that evil, in and of itself. Not as it currently exists.


Wayne Throop throopw@xxxxxxxxx http://sheol.org/throopw
.