Recently, to defend their horrendous business practices Cambridge Analytica tweeted:
"Advertising is not coercive; people are smart enough to think for themselves."
There are a number of things wrong with that statement, not the least of which that the statement itself is meant to change your mind in their favor.
But when I first read it, all I could think of was University.
There was this time I was watching TV with a friend of mine and these commercials came on.
The first was for pizza, the second was for cars I think, and the third was for this local lawyer named "The Hammer".
Now, by the time "The Hammer" had laid down his angry gavel, my friend turned to me and said:
"Man, I could really go for a pizza."
Today's episode is not about Cambridge Analytica, it's not about pizza. It's about advertising.
It's about my personal demons and perhaps more than that, it's about how I pay for all of this.
[ethereal music]
In 1980, the world changed.
Ronald Reagan decided it was okay to advertise to children, which at the time was a watershed decision
and yet now we all kind of take it for granted.
Yet, it fundamentally altered my generation and every generation since
Because kids are really easy marks when it comes to advertisement.
If you're eight years old or younger, your brain is literally incapable of understanding selling intent.
That means, to a child, an ad is just as entertaining as the show it surrounds. They're one and the same.
Within a year of Reagan's decision, toy companies were in the cartoon business, turning every popular children's toy into a TV show and vice versa.
GI Joe, Care Bears, Ninja Turtles, Transformers, Thundercats, you name it.
Pretty much everything that we 30-somethings feel nostalgia for were ads meant to sell us a product
and our little brains were incapable of seeing them for what they were.
25 years later and my generation is posting He-man memes in their Thundercats shirt while the Lego movie plays in the background.
We pine for the commercials of our youth.
If your parents didn't buy you the right toys, were you really a part of our generation?
It's clear that advertising is more than just commerce, especially when viewed in retrospect.
Deceptive or not, these TV shows became more than just ways to sell us toys.
They became socially relevant art. Art for children, granted, commercial art, granted, but art nevertheless.
Today it would be hard to argue that Reagan's decision wasn't a cultural watershed.
It changed all of our childhoods, it introduced us to a form of persuasion that we would be inundated with for the rest of our lives.
The average American sees between 500 and a thousand ads a day and the ones that stand out are remembered for a lifetime.
The more ubiquitous an ad is in our public consciousness, the more likely we'll see it as culture instead of commerce
Burma-shave on Route 66 is an American icon.
Here in Santiago de Chile, two wine advertisements are national monuments.
Like Andy Warhol's Brillo box, they're more than the sum of their commercial parts. They're pop art.
Our society is so adapted to advertisements, that we accept their surreptitious form of persuasion as a normal part of life.
Studies have repeatedly shown that we'll knowingly pick a worse product if we saw it in an advertisement first.
We believe drinks are more delicious if we heard about them in advance.
Ads don't just make us buy more, they change how we perceive what we're buying.
Propaganda works. We are not the drivers of our own minds, no matter how intelligent we are.
And for the most part, this is happening subconsciously. There's little we can do to fight it. Regardless of age, we're all just kind of children along for the ride.
But I'm not really complaining. This is the way of the world.
The point of this is more just to say that Cambridge Analytica couldn't be more wrong.
Nobody's really making up their own mind.
Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to the actual point of this episode, which are my personal demons.
There was a time when I promoted Space Flight. Despite being ment his persuasion, my art felt guiltless.
I worked for free and believed in what I was doing. So I was willing to actively convince as many people as possible to see my point of view.
And I got good at it.
My ability to influence people was something I took pride in. My work was featured on the news in over 70 countries.
Documentaries came all the way to Germany just to film me typing on my laptop.
My art saw hundreds of millions of views and interactions. It was a huge ego boost if nothing else.
I'd been able to take part in something culturally relevant and in turn I'd seen firsthand what impact art can have on society.
But it earned me no money and in life you have to pay the bills.
So building off the back of that success, I started an ad firm and began using my creativity to promote products I didn't believe in.
I devised strategies for companies I didn't support. I helped sell things I would never use.
And at the time it seemed like the logical step up.
It was a way to keep creating influential art without going bankrupt
But eventually I found I couldn't get up in the morning
It wasn't so much that I didn't care if my ads became the next burma-shave. I actively didn't want them to.
Because the benchmarks all felt tainted. The better I got at the job, the worse I felt about what I was doing.
Every day, I had to face directly what Cambridge Analytica and denies so plainly
Which is that if my job is to put ideas into your mind,
What ideas am I putting there?
So I quit. I moved to Chile cashed out my savings and started making videos.
It didn't change the fact that I'm still trying to influence people I certainly don't begrudge those who work in advertising.
I realized the privileged position that I'm in, being able to make this decision. After all I haven't stopped being a commercial entity.
This video is an advertisement from my product, Rare Earth. But it's a product I believe in.
A  product I wouldn't mind seeing have an impact.
These days it isn't hard for me to get out of bed.
In fact, I've never felt so empowered.
But it has been incredibly expensive - every one of these episodes cost me around $1,000 to make.
Which on one hand is very cheap for a documentary series and on the other, with over 60 episodes filmed,
devastating to my finances.
It's come to the point where I need to find a way to make this sustainable.
But my great fear is that in doing so, I'm going to end up harming you in the process.
Last month we turned on YouTube ads for our older videos
and it was a decision I'd put off for maybe six months.
Even though I don't have to personally promote a product, and we only really turned them on to help with the algorithm,
It feels like a slippery slope because there's very little money there, the real money is in sponsorships.
And as we've grown, offers have been coming in more and more.
Companies will give me multiple thousands of dollars per video to talk positively about their products.
And – as with any Youtuber – no matter their thoughts on influence, the temptation to commercialize is very real.
But in making that decision I feel like I'd be taking a step backwards. As much as it sounds like vanity
I don't want my art to be a vehicle for someone else's product, even if it makes me rich.
I don't want to help 23andme harvest your DNA for their databases.
I don't want to push a product that I personally don't stand behind.
It's the exact demon that I ran from. So, very long story short: We've started a patreon.
I've always been intimidated asking for money, but after dozens of people requested a way to donate,
we've decided to give this a try.
But that said, I want it clear that there is absolutely no need for you to give me money to take part in all this.
You coming back every week to watch our episodes is already more than I ever expected you to do.
I simply want to make this sustainable in a way that harms you the least. Whether you give me zero dollars or a hundred,
I'm just happy you're here. Necause no matter what happens
I'll Drive my bank account down to nothing to continue making these. There is a road to becoming the artist I always wanted to be.
I'm invested 100 percent, and if that's something that appeals to you, you're more than welcome to join me.
Advertising may be an art, but it's no longer my art. I make Rare Earth and I'm gonna do my best to keep it that way.
Don't forget that something doesn't have to be coercive to change your opinion.
Research everything you see on YouTube. Never make it easy for someone to make up your mind for you.
Because no matter what Cambridge Analytica will tell you, it's hard to think for yourself.
This is Rare Earth.
But there are products that I do stand behind, and I will always tell you about those as I've used them.
This is my friend Francisco. He is a very old friend of mine, and he owns a company here in Santiago called Awto.
I guess we're not in Santiago right now. But we drove here with Awto, it's a car share program
It's very good. The money goes to him.
He's a good person. He deserves the money.
So you'll see Awto in some of our videos (the little car that we used to drive around Chile).
Thank you, Francisco, great company, use Awto when you're here.
Should I say something?
Yeah, something. Perfect.
Something.
