Ethical Restrictions on Advertising

Freedom of Speech is relevant to individuals, not businesses or other powerful actors. Laws that limit psychological harm and implicit deceit in advertising are a good idea.

Monday, December 23rd, 2024

Feeling disrespected and manipulated yet?

I am!

You see, it’s people like ME who are the “secondary targets” of Montgomery County, PA’s above poster. The “primary target” is anyone who is vulnerable to the implied message of “people who question the government’s position” are dumb, stupid, stoners, non-thinkers, silly, not to be listened to, deserve no respect, idiots, etc.

Only — I’m none of those things, am I?

In 2020, 2021, and even through 2022, I chose to eliminate all unhealthy food from my diet, I got lots of sleep, I got lots of exercise, and I lost thirty pounds. I did my own exhaustive and continuous research, and I effectively and successfully used hydroxychloroquine to both prevent Covid for two years plus while managing my one and only case of Covid, which I eventually caught in May 2022. And which, thanks to my pre-loading with HCQ, went very, very well.

But no — I did not inject myself with virtually unknown, virtually untested, extremely risky, experimental mRNA technology, which we now understand, did NOT live up to expectations and DID cause tremendous harm to millions of people on the planet.

Compare the above photos, and you can’t help but see the ugliness of those who seek to manipulate others plagued by insecurity, doubt, and/or those who desperately want to believe they are better than their fellow Americans — who made a different decision.

This underhanded manipulation motivates arrogance and contempt, it divides our nation against itself, it turns family members against family members and neighbors against neighbors.

It is destructive and should not be allowed in our advertising future as a nation.

Sometime in 2021, I believe it was, my baby brother (then in his mid-30s) ended his relationship with me, because of this kind of evil advertising. I've literally never said a cross word to my brother, and I have staunchly supported every person's right to decide whether they want to participate in the Covid experiment or not.

But — these types of grotesque propagandists managed to convince my brother and tens of millions of other Americans that the mere act of sharing information that ran counter to the singular government agenda — was tantamount to murder.

An entire planet, with many fabulous and competent people, was trying to find a solution to the “problem” of Covid, and naturally this meant some people (billions, in fact) were developing ideas that differed from Dr. Fauci, Big Pharma Bosses, and the Midnight Blue Governors who began firing every state employee who didn’t roll up their sleeves on command.

And — those people knew they had to do something about:
People like me.

Of the many evil messages shoveled down our throats, a la an endless media blitz, was the idea that anyone who uttered a word against the singular government agenda — must be canceled.

My brother was one of those people who fell victim to this particular messaging. As I scanned the globe, tracking discoveries, experiments and data points that thoroughly debunked the American Mythology surrounding Covid, I shared what I learned on Facebook, and one day — my brother showed up, out of nowhere, on my page.

We had a long-standing agreement that we didn’t discuss anything related to vaccinations. He was loyal to “the experts” and saw no reason to question the intelligent, university educated, medical establishment. I, on the other hand, have children (he does not) and I’ve learned a lot about the history of vaccine medicine over the years. A “delegator” I am not, when it comes to the health of my children.

What’s a “delegator?”

Read: “The mRNA injections were NEVER a good idea…and it was obvious early on.”

Anyway — back to my brother, and millions of people’s brothers, parents, adult children, co-workers, friends, and so on — he became convinced (by unethical and hopefully one-day illegal propaganda) that I would cause the death of people he loved because someone who read my content might decide to not get these injections, resulting in them catching and spreading Covid, making ME responsible for the inevitable deaths that would follow.

Because his fear and anger and desperation had been hyped up and fed by these types of advertisements, and because he was intentionally led to believe that he and his perspective existed in “the realm of wisdom and education,” while people like me were “dangerously ignorant and spreading deadly misinformation” … my baby brother decided we couldn't agree to disagree. I was literally going to get people killed, and that wasn't something he could accept.

And, here I sit.

Having not heard from a brother who I doted upon for years and years and years. All because of extreme propaganda like above, which caused tens of millions of Americans to cast away their family members.

That is the real, long-lasting consequence of this type of propaganda.

Just like we need ethics and journalism — which currently exist but are clearly not being upheld — we also need ethics and strict laws regulating the propaganda industry.

If we allow people with money and power to utilize what we know about psychological warfare and manipulation of human beings, then we will reap what we allow those people to sow.

We need to invent a way to preserve freedom of speech, of the individual, while protecting society from institutionalized, corporate, government, and military propaganda that’s designed to mess with people's heads.

Psychological warfare must be stopped.

Advertising should be constrained to the spread of information that includes honest bias representation. If your goal with advertising is to encourage people to arrive at a certain conclusion, I think you should have to say it out loud.

It's sort of like cigarettes and how the boxes have photos of diseased lungs, and a statement that this product can kill you or can cause cancer. We give people the opportunity to make their free choice, whether they want to smoke or not, but draw the line at cigarette ads suggesting, for example, that their product will make you thin, popular, beautiful and happy — or denying the likely negative side effects.

In the same way, the side effect of weaponizing fear and loyalty and arrogance should be acknowledged, and I would go a step further and say that you need to have a statement of what your goal is.

If you want to portray little kids eating cold cereal and drinking soda pop while they chow down on potato chips — and you choose kids who are super healthy and athletic, such as gymnasts, for your advertisement — are you lying? I say, yes.

Maybe, instead, there needs to be a photo of the average obese child in America, or a statement about how unhealthy eating can contribute to childhood diabetes, or something else such as, “our goal is to entice you to purchase our food products, by showing you pictures of healthy people eating our food, even though our products are not healthy.”

Yes. We’re still waiting for that apology…

You really weren't correct, we really weren't wrong, you really did cause tremendous harm, and we really did suffer under this frightening experiment that sadly was far too successful for my comfort.

You signaled clearly your willingness to become a party member, just like all of the other people in history who we tend to look back on and shake our heads and wonder how they could do that?

Well, now YOU know, because YOU did it.

Could you please do humanity a favor? Figure out how you got manipulated and start speaking up about how you are going to do better next time. You need to speak up, loud and proud, to tell the dangerous people of the world that you won't fall for their bullshit next time.

Or they will try again, and it will be much worse the next time around.