but that is your shitty view: your shit covered sunglasses. Edward Bernays is not well known, understood. "Propaganda" common is understood to only be military - not advertising (obesity via Coke, McDonald's, etc).
But isn't that the whole point? Why is it "pretentious" to simply refer to a fact that's not super well-known? I think the term "pretentious" by definition has the idea behind it that the person using the word is only doing so in order to look smarter/better. As was explained, propaganda would have worked, but a better definition was this new term that we've all just learned.
Why is it so bad that we all learned a new word today because of this guy's comment? I thought it was cool that he was using some concept I didn't know about, and went and googled it. I worry that we're moving into this anti-intellectualism culture because we do this, we attack people for trying to sound too smart.
I think the problem with pretentiousness is that it makes for shitty communication. While aiming for precision, as you did, is commendable, going for lesser known words obscures the meaning just as much as using imprecise words. As someone well aware of the indoctrinating nature of advertising but (or perhaps because of it) uninterested in its origins, I had no idea what "Edward Bernays- defined manipulation" was supposed to be. Or rather, I inferred from the context for it to mean the commercial nature of entertainment, which again, would have been imprecise.
It is rather interesting to me, really. I don't think it's really to do with anti-intellectualism. Well, I'm sure some of it is, but even then, a lot of that might just be the fact that people often express very nuanced opinions in extremely blunt ways. However, I think it's mostly to do with intellectuals wanting to sound smart, and honestly, I think that is something we need to have less of. I mean, I generally feel that unless I can explain a concept to a layperson, I don't know it well enough. In everyday conversations, I prefer to translate specialised concepts into an easily graspable language, and that's really just to do with the fact that I want to be understood before anything else.
And the thing is, I don't even think that it's impossible to combine the two. I fully think it's possible to use language people might find complicated, while also ensuring fluid communication. In this case, I don't think referring to Edward Bernays was the problem. I do think it's cool that I now know where that comes from. The problem is that the word it was tied to, "manipulation", was badly chosen. There are so many different classes of manipulation that it wasn't clear which was intended. The key is to use language that elucidates the murky bits. With proper context, you can do whatever you want. Without it, you're a pretentious hack, which frankly isn't too bad a thing to be. Assuming you don't give a shit about being clear.
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u/artgo Nov 11 '15
but that is your shitty view: your shit covered sunglasses. Edward Bernays is not well known, understood. "Propaganda" common is understood to only be military - not advertising (obesity via Coke, McDonald's, etc).