Re: virus: Tabacco mind virus.

Tony Hindle (t.hindle@joney.demon.co.uk)
Wed, 2 Jul 1997 02:59:03 +0100


In message <33B929D8.62319AC4@tripod.net>, Drakir <Drahcir@tripod.net>
writes

>Tony Hindle wrote:
>> Yea true. I am trying to think from the tabacco plc's position.
>
>What about from the position of Levi's or Reeboks? It's a standard
>marketing thing, surely.

For sure. But lets focus on the Tabacco giants for now.

> You get the right people doing it, then others
>are going to follow.

Hear that any terminally ill lung cancer patients? even he is
telling you what to do now.

> Once it enters society, peer pressure takes over.
>Just because it's bad for you doesn't make them selling it wrong.
>Tobacco's already in society. IT's not a new product, so restricting
>the advertising (flashback from a post a while ago) is useless.

I strongly disagree on this point. (And yet on a deeper level I
agree). If restricting advertising which is a control strategy in
memespace is useless then does this imply all memetic engineering
efforts are useless?

>
>What I can gather that you're getting at is that they're selling it
>under the pretence of it not being bad for you.

No it is the pretense that their pro-Tabacco expendature is not
serving to keep the replacement ratios up.

> I'd have to disagree.
>Cigarette packets are plastered with warnings about the dangers, and
>there are massive campaigns against smoking. I knew it was bad for me,
>and I still know that it's killing me.

No you dont. Nobody knows until they are at least diagnosed with
terminal lung cancer. And even then most people will have dealing
strategies so that they dont fully realise the enormity of their fate.
If and when they do they will know what is right.


>
>Now put yourself in the position of one of the tobacco giants. People
>know the stuff is bad for them, and you're severly restricted in your
>advertising rights anyhow. Does that stop you selling it if people want
>it? You don't have to do any underhand campaigning to sell your
>product. It's already on the streets, and society already wants it. So
>just sit back and keep raking in the money. I'd do it. Shit, I'd
>probably smoke my own brand too - at least then I wouldn't have to pay
>for them.

Same here but I'd be crapping in my pants at the thought of one
of the brink of death lung cancer patients deciding with not an ounce of
doubt that it would be one final virtuous act to kill a carefully chosen
person from Tabacco plc.
So much would I be crapping my pants that I would become a born
again anti slow-killing-for profit do gooder.
Especially if a few casualties were notched up.

Yea, if I was a tabacco plc conspirator and I was
reading this thread I would be lurking and praying it all dies before
anyone starts taking it seriously.

>That's no probs, because new generations step in to take their place :)

But the replacement ratio can be adjusted downward with a
memetic campagn.

>
>> If ciggys killed imedietly they would never
>> take off.
>
>Guns kill immediately (most of the time), and there are shitloads of
>them.

No they dont kill until they are pointed and fired. That could
be ten years after the sellers got their buck.

Tony Hindle.
looking foreward to that piss up still.