Breaking News! Sex Sells!

Article

Brief Summary: A scientist decides that we buy things in order to impress other people and hopefully, hopefully impress them enough to have sex with them, because we are animals with two basic goals: survival and reproduction. Advertisers, having caught on to these goals, oh, a million years ago, use this information to market their products accordingly.

Haven't we known for a long time of the futility of actually believing that drinking beer will make you more attractive (it totally does, btw)? But I suppose that doesn't stop us from buying cool shit and hoping someone takes notice. Maybe he makes some other groundbreaking revelation in the book, and this is just the opening line. I don't know. I haven't read the book, because I don't see how purchasing it will help me live longer or lure anyone into my loft bed. Besides, I seem to get it all wrong anyway. The Loft bed... why did I buy that? I think maybe I must be designed differently than these other "humans" that buy everything for sex and survival. Its like, I sort of got the idea -- bed -- but then somehow, the idea got twisted (have you ever tried climbing down from a loft bed? It can be hazardous) when I put it into practice. Maybe I just know that my other qualities are so impressive, the things I own don't matter:

"We take wondrously adaptive capacities for human self-display — language, intelligence, kindness, creativity, and beauty — and then forget how to use them in making friends, attracting mates and gaining prestige. Instead, we rely on goods and services acquired through education, work and consumption to advertise our personal traits to others. These costly signals are mostly redundant or misleading, so others usually ignore them. They prefer to judge us through natural face-to-face interaction."

I hope he is right, because I am really poor, and don't have much money to invest in the way of impressing friends and boys that I like. I guess the pointlessness of consumerism is a good topic, so I should support this guy for writing about this, but there are a couple reasons why I think he might win a place on the D-nozzle spectrum.

"We've known since Darwin that animals are basically machines for survival and reproduction; now we also know that animals achieve much of their survival and reproductive success through self-advertisement, self-marketing and self-promotion."

Well, that is depressing. OR, we live in a capitalist consumerist society, and so it makes the most sense to look at our basic instinctive traits through common terms of a cap-con framework -- advertisement, marketing, and promotion. Are we, as animals, inherently programmed to be capitalists? Or is it really just evolutionary randomness. Make up your mind! Make up my mind! Make up your FACE.

And last but not least:
"Unlike many malcontents," Miller writes, "I consider the three best inventions of all time to be money, markets and media."

Douche Baaaag! I'm not sure how the above has anything to do with his book. It's like he is making a disclaimer: Oh, well, I don't think there is anything wrong with these tools! I just want to analyze them! I'm still one of you! Hey guys! Wait up! I love you capitalism! I buy stuff to impress you! I know all your secrets! Thats the point of my book! Waaaaait for meeeeee!

Speaking of D-nozzles, I went to the Cha Cha last night. Here are my thoughts.
Dude in the mustache: You know, some people actually used to watch He-Man, before it became something ironic to talk about in a bar.
Dude who talked about music: I knew what indie meant before you were even BORN, so I don't need your permission for anything thankyouverymuch. And get your condescending hand off my shoulder before I exsanguinate you.

Please feel free to read the article and let me know if I got it all wrong. I usually do (loft bed, remember?).