Hi, I’m from the games industry. Governments, please stop us
&gt; &quot;We need to reign this stuff in. Its not just psychological warfare, but warfare where you, the customer, are woefully outgunned, and losing. Some people are losing catastrophically.&quot;<p>I strongly disagree with this statement. I am very aware of the psychology behind marketing and advertising, and anyone with half an interest in it has probably read Vance Packard&#x27;s <i>The Hidden Persuaders</i>, which was released, oh, <i>58 years ago</i>. People <i>know</i> what pushes their buttons, too, and we have a name for it: <i>interest</i>. Not &quot;manipulation&quot;. Certainly not &quot;psychological warfare&quot;.<p>Marketing and advertising might seem to be refined in this dopamine-heavy, short-attention-span social gaming age, but this shit has been around as long as humanity itself has existed. Some people have better impulse control than others; it&#x27;s not the state&#x27;s job to regulate the impulses of their populaces, or regulate systems that know how to manipulate them. It&#x27;s a slippery slope that would take down the entirety of marketing and advertising as an industry, an industry which is pretty much necessary for the vast majority of the citizenry to even know <i>what is out there to purchase</i>.<p>Furthermore, how would one even decide where the line between manipulative consumption and social signaling is? Some people want to own all the capital ships; they have some social hierarchy in some subculture standing upon it. Should I regulate that, too, and force them to have the same consumption values and preferences that I do? Should we take this a step further and ban all vices? Let&#x27;s see how fast American society would fall apart if we banned alcohol again.<p>FWIW, I hate consumerism and advertising. I block ads everywhere, I hate big branded items, I don&#x27;t know the last time I bought something from an ad. Just because I feel this way, I don&#x27;t go around trying to violently force that opinion upon others by begging the state to do it for me.