[saulrh]

It's not a war. It's evolution. Nature, red in tooth and claw. Ideas live in you, and they die in you, and they evolve. Reproduction: ideas spread, through words, deeds, and creations. Variation: communication inherently introduces errors, and thoughts change over time. Selection: ideas that are forgotten die without spreading. With reproduction, variation, and selection, you have evolution.

Religion is a coherent, tenacious, communal meme with unbelievably virulent reproductive mechanisms. A school is a selective breeding program. And advertisements are memetic WMDs, colossal infectious vectors with powerful memetic payloads. Your goal is to infect minds with your idea and to keep them infected long enough for them to take the actions dictated by your meme. Your meme has to be able to reproduce. Your meme has to be transmitted without variation. Your meme has to be selected.

[dhimes]

And advertisements are memetic WMDs, colossal infectious vectors with powerful memetic payloads

Unfortunately for my budget, in all but the rarest circumstances advertising is quite a weak vector, seldom infectious, and requires constant reinforcement to have even a small effect.

[justaman]

Unfortunately for the U.S, people are all too quick to jump on the [slang] bandwagon, "squad". Dont underestimate even limited exposure. Oldspice/Axe commercials and Uncle Grandpa on Cartoon Network seems to market towards people with ADHD.

[denom]

I appreciate your point of view, but doesn't this deny human nature, replacing subjectivity with a kind of sterile mechanistic objectivity? We can make rational choices. For instance, we could remove advertisements from public places and roads.

[nitrogen]

The idea of removing advertisements is itself a meme that propagates and must compete with other memes.

[jameshart]

If ads are memetic WMDs, then maybe it is a war.