I feel it leans into advertising being about convincing one what one has is bad, not good enough or embarrasing, such that a product is bought. I think I agree that could be considered covert unkind speech in media and advertising. The barrage of things telling people they aren't good enough or preying on insecurities would have detremental effects. Personally, I enjoy the kind-spirited effort behind this, I'll be putting this in the header of my running notes .md file.
I agree, it's present in comment sections as well, and probably a lot of other places too unfortunately.
I think the best explanation I can offer for how advertising does it in my view is the manifesto I wrote for the website's homepage: https://kindspeech.org/
tldr: creating a desire or a need for people, which is what advertising usually attempt to do, implies that they are lacking in some way. That's not a good feeling. And it's often simply false or vastly exaggerated. Imo, making people feel bad in order to sell is unkind.
Their website somewhat defines it.
I feel it leans into advertising being about convincing one what one has is bad, not good enough or embarrasing, such that a product is bought. I think I agree that could be considered covert unkind speech in media and advertising. The barrage of things telling people they aren't good enough or preying on insecurities would have detremental effects. Personally, I enjoy the kind-spirited effort behind this, I'll be putting this in the header of my running notes .md file.