Something I’ve seen a lot more lately is that algorithms seem to be trending in a fashion similar to advertising did in the birth of consumerism. Like lately, the WNBA gets an overwhelming amount of attention online compared to their actual viewership and ticket sale. The majority of attention given to the WNBA is drama, it’s “this person said this” “look at the bad blood after x foul” etc, they’re selling drama over gameplay to try to get viewers. This reminds me of Bernays and his book Propaganda, where he says to use coercion to sell consumerism and products. One such example is the selling of pianos, to Bernays selling a piano directly is foolish, pianos are expensive, heavy, and require skill to play. However if you sell someone a music room, a place where you have gatherings and social interactions, what could be more iconic than a piano? The piano changes from a space consuming instrument to a focal point in a room, it is what you compare to your neighbors music rooms, what sets your level of sophistication amongst your friends.

This makes me curious how much social media has already altered algorithms to mimic advertising selling lifestyles. We know they do it for political reasons, and maybe this massive WNBA push is just more social engineering to see how far they can cultivate their consumers. It’ll be interesting to see how successful this endeavor is over the next few years as a litmus test of how society is responding to social indoctrination by tech companies.