Selling massive amounts of merchandise for a cause whether it's "March for Our Lives" or many other so-called charities that start things off by raising money for their cause often without providing much if any of that money to the actual cause is now routine thanks to the marketing industry that seems to have controlled a large portion of these efforts.
This is also distracting people from the most effective solutions to all kinds of violence not just the school shootings that have become a much higher priority now that kids of wealthy people have been shot. As I've pointed out in several past articles including Prevention of violence has to address all causes, not just Guns! reasonable gun control is part of the solution, but availability of guns is not the only contributing cause of this violence and it's almost certainly not the most important one.
First of all, I don't agree with fanatical claims from gun rights advocates that this is part of a bizarre conspiracy to take away their guns, especially since if it were, it's been repeated so often without having any success, nor are there many high profile people that want to take all guns away; instead there are a large number of people demanding reasonable limitations to assault weapons and background checks to make sure violent people don't get guns.
And I certainly don't agree with their claims that the kids from Parkland are part of this alleged conspiracy!
However there is an enormous amount of evidence indicating far more coordination than the media is letting on and most of it seems to be for the benefit of the Democratic Party, which is also ignoring many of the most important contributing causes of violence, including child abuse leading to escalating violence or abandoned inner cities where there is much more violence all the time.
Furthermore, even though I would be skeptical of claims, without evidence that these kids are involved in a conspiracy to suppress the most effective education about violence prevention; there is evidence to indicate that they may being used by marketing people more interested in selling products, their ideology and political agenda; and that this effort has the same effect, even if those involved don't intend to do this. This includes those ripped jeans which Emma González was wearing on the cover of Time Magazine and at the rally, which contrary to what many people may believe, is a choice made by many people as a result of manipulative marketing campaigns that have been going on for decades, although those unfamiliar with marketing techniques might find this hard to believe; those that are familiar with them and their history would come to the opposite conclusion based on much better research.
But the strongest evidence of a major problem with the media coverage of this shooting and how to prevent it isn't what they do cover in the media it's what they ignore, or if they cover some contributing causes they do so only briefly while obsessively covering the debate about gun control, as if it's the only contributing cause and gun laws will solve the whole problem, which they won't even come close to, as I reported in my previous article.
I do recall a very brief segment about some of these kids from Parkland supporting efforts from kids in abandoned inner cities and several other comments from some of the same kids indicating that they support other efforts; however when I looked for anything but discussion about anything but gun control, just now, which is part of the solution as I indicated, I didn't find anything, instead finding an enormous amount of bickering with Laura Ingram and Steve King, who I disagree with but don't think he should be allowed to distract from additional issues anymore than he already has.
One of the most important contributing causes of violence that is almost never mentioned is early child abuse, including corporal punishment, leading to escalating violence; and Florida is one of the nineteen states that still allow it to be used in schools. This is often more likely to be allowed in schools in states that also are more inclined to use it more at home as well.The states that use it the most routinely make it into the top ten for murder rates one year after another. Florida is a large state which doesn't use it equally across the state but they did make it into the top ten in 2014 and some parts of Florida use it far more, especially disabled or minority students, than other.
This is the state where the Ingraham v. Wright case came from in 1977 which decided that it was constitutional to beat kids, even when it causes serious physical harm. Even though this decision allowed the continued use of corporal punishment there was a massive backlash leading many states to abandon it, although it didn't get much media attention, like many of the most productive solutions that actually work. At that time almost all states still allowed it in schools but now thirty-one have banned it and there are semi-regular efforts to ban it in many of the remaining nineteen states, yet hardly anyone hears about them.
This is a major opportunity to draw more attention to this contributing cause yet it's be ignored!
Another major contributing cause to violence is abandoned inner cities where many of the poorest people are forced to live in and multinational corporations are shipping their jobs overseas while dumping an enormous amount of pollution in their neighborhoods among other things including efforts to privatize their education systems and cut costs. Some of these Parkland kids have said that we should "arm our teachers with pencils, pens, paper and the money they need to" teach kids and do their jobs, which do doubt is a major part of the solution; however if you want to find all the details of how to put this in practice you won't find that from the traditional media.
If these kids are covering more details on this subject they must be on social media or in their town halls where is doesn't get nearly as much attention, but even that is buried with all the bickering over gun control.
One of the biggest contributing factors is poverty and income inequality, which the kids from Parkland don't have to worry about; and they've been raised in a culture where many of the contributing causes of this are overlooked and they have an incentive to keep it that way since they're the beneficiaries of this income inequality. This is rarely ever discussed; and when it is the reasons for it are almost always left out, especially if the mass media is discussing it.
The United States has a higher murder rate than other developed countries including Europe where the rate is about three per hundred thousand people compared to about five in the United States; however many of the countries that ban corporal punishment and provide better child care and education have a rate of less than one; there are over one-hundred-twenty-five cities with more than ten, which is double the national average and many of them are at least four to five times the national average, a few as high as forty, fifty, or even seventy-five murders per hundred thousand.
However there's little or no effort to inform the majority of the public about this; instead there's a massive school reform movement being pushed by the wealthy to cut funds for education in these cities even more while they don't hesitate to increase funds for law enforcement courts and prisons, which clearly don't work.
Another major contributing factor causing high rates of poverty and indirectly contributing to high violence rates is massive amounts of economic fraud and a large portion of this is accompanied by massive amounts of deceptive advertising designed to promote an enormous amount of overpaying or waste on the part of consumers. The most effective advertising, like all propaganda, which is essentially what advertising is, starts at a very young age when children are very impressionable, as some good researchers like Sociologists and economist Juliet Schor reported in her book "Born To Buy," and child psychologist Susan Linn reported in her book "Consuming Kids."
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Understanding their research will help recognize how the marketing industry is influencing the protest movement and helping to replace discussion about productive solutions with massive efforts to sell merchandise and collect funds, and enormous amount of money which isn't necessary going to the cause they claim it is going to, instead often going to fund raiding expenses or in many cases even for profit fundraising for charities, believe it or not.
When the organizers of the "March for our Lives" campaign aren't talking about gun control or bickering with right wing extremists, the vast majority of their efforts, judging by media coverage, are for fund raising or selling merchandise promoting their tour. In the first week they raised three an a half million dollars, including several half million dollar pledges from celebrities like Oprah, George Clooney and a few others, according to an article cited below and they must have raised much more since then. How much of that money is actually going to their cause and how is it being spent?
I don't know; and I'm not convince they know either, it's not likely that they've ever been involved in this before. The father of one of the teens collecting the money for their charity says that “They’re being directed by people with knowledge of how to responsibly spend this money and it’s going to be very transparent. Every penny is going to be accounted for.” Would these people familiar with fund raising expenses and problems claim that, "every penny is going to be accounted for?” after reading enough about fund raising problems I doubt if they could honestly make that claim. They may have good intention as other fund raiser have had in the past but before it's all said and done it's almost never completely accounted for when the numbers get this big.
The article cited below say that the funds are being raised to pay for the rally which they had last weekend, and that any funds left over would be used to advance the cause one way or another, although it wasn't very specific; my best guess is that if there's any further discussion about the subject it won't be widely reported and the details will be buried, as it has happened in the past. Occasionally there's a few people that look closer and they almost always find problems, although they might not find people willing to listen.
I do know that almost no discussion reported on the media covered most of the contributing factors to violence, which can often be found in libraries for those willing to do their own research; but the media, which makes a fortune selling deceptive propaganda ads selling one scam after another and more selling ads for politicians that never keep their promises doesn't report on this research which could help reduce violence.
Did George Clooney or Oprah pledge large amounts of money to any of the past survivors shootings, that didn't come from wealthy communities? Did they make any effort to enable educators about the causes of violence to get their point across or expose marketing scams that help increase poverty which leads to more violence?
Not that I know of, after a quick search of the internet; however I did find settlements for eighteen million dollars from an insurance company bickering over unspent funds from Newtown and claims that they weren't getting anything from a Tim McGraw concert. Most shootings don't seem to collect much if any money, or at least not that's reported on the internet; however the high profile ones often collect an enormous amount of donations and there's eventually bickering.
Well over a million dollars was spent on the Sandyhook Memorial.
We worship memorials.
But we cut funds to schools for education and decline to inform the public about the biggest causes of violence so it can be prevented.
James Garbarino and Barbara Coloroso are a couple of the best researchers that I know of that might be able to educate the public about how violence escalates from an early age, yet they can't get more than a token amount of media coverage and most people ever even saw that. in addition to stopping child abuse from escalating James Garborino also expressed concerns about violence in the media.
Could that be part of the reason why he can't get any coverage? for what it's worth, after looking at some of these studies I suspect violence in the media is only a minor contributing factor, often if it's added to an abusive environment. Statistics about violence and murder rates going down as violence in the media has gone up seem to support this conclusion; at the same time thanks to education from Benjamin Spock and other reformers child rearing tactics and abuse has dramatically changed which indicates this is a much bigger contributing factor.
I don't mean to sound cynical but after all the hype dies down after a big event like this there is almost never much progress until another shooting when we start all over again. Also, as I said before Europe doesn't have nearly as big a problem with all this violence and they do a better job addressing some of these issues, which is presumably why and shows that we can too!
Another major contributing factor of violence, directly or indirectly, may be marketing itself, which the media and advisers to these kids, that have become super organizers over night are not likely to ever mention!
Seriously, marketing definitely contributes to violence the only question is how much, and how do we manage to get the discussion into the mainstream when the people that control over ninety percentage of national media have a massive incentive to cover it up or ridicule the idea if they can't avoid all discussion.
It's unlikely that marketing is the biggest contributing factor when it comes to causing crime; however it is a major contributing factor when it comes to increasing poverty, which few would argue is a major contributing cause of violence; and it's a major distraction so that the most important causes of crime aren't discussed. Also when they market a massive campaign for one single issue which only impacts a portion of violence drowning out all other discussion marketing creates the illusion of a solution where none exists. This is also done by relying heavily on celebrities including musicians that they often treat almost as experts on any given subject despite the fact that they often have no background on anything except entertainment, or perhaps propaganda.
Don't get me wrong I like music as much as anything else but when they constantly try to imply that having a fundraising concert for everything is the solution without discussing the contributing causes for problems it's a seriously screwed up sense of priorities.
One of the most obvious examples, which the media almost never talks about is the killings that have been going on for decades over hyped up overpriced sneakers or leather jackets for decades. These made the news much more often in the nineties before the media was consolidated into six oligarchies, but they never stopped, although the reporting has been buried where few people see it.
Amazingly one person came up with the brilliant idea of marketing a T-shirt saying "Aint' no sneaker worth killing for!" without discussing the causes leading up to this violence; or exposing marketing as a contributing factor of crime and violence! It's not uncommon for the trendsetters or celebrities to act shocked when their hype goes to far and pretend to oppose violence while not considering how their scams might contribute to it, or even being outraged if anyone else tries to sort out the casues.
Another is annual Black Friday riots which have been going on for decades, and for a while about six to eight years ago they went viral so much that the mainstream media even started to report on it more. This never ended, although once again the reporting on it is now relegated to the fringe; although retailers may have quietly partially addressed this problem without acknowledging the causes might be marketing.
After a lot of viral news stories during the holidays in 2011 to about 2014 they mentioned it less often but there's good reason to believe part of the reason is a new marketing campaign to start Black Friday early; however the result of that is that they have fewer riots shootings or stabbings on Black Friday but more throughout the months of November and December, so actual violence hasn't gone down. Another obvious indicator that marketing is causing more crime is demonstrated by the large number of annual thefts of massive amounts of Christmas decoration.
In the "Overspent American" Juliet Schor also cited at least a few statistics showing that crime increased as a result of massive amounts of marketing and it wouldn't be hard to find additional evidence to show that there's no doubt that marketing is a contributing factor of crime and violence, assuming people want to acknowledged the facts, which those involved in the political and media establishment don't.
Juliet Schor and Susan Linn also both reported about the increased use of peer pressure in marketing, and how it might be used to turn teenagers against each other if marketing through "trendsetters" or the "cool people" in the crowd becomes more important than friendships. This is a tactic that was researched decades ago by the Tobacco Industry, which later became widely used throughout all marketing industries, as their books show.
One of the tactics that the Tobacco Industry was exposed for using was intentionally using slotting fees to buy locations to stock their cigarettes where it would be easy for teenagers to steal them. The objective was to get them hooked while they were inclined to steal then they buy for life, and they compensated struggling convenience stores or grocery stores by paying them for the location of the products. This is a massive anti competitive tactic which the majority of the public is still not aware of and it increased crime.
I didn't know it at the time but I encountered another of the popular tactics used to get kids hooked, when a couple teenagers kept pulling out the tab, of their Marlboro's, and screaming, "Not a V-8" and giggling.
I had to ask what that was all about from another girl, and she informed me that if there was a "V-8" in a code that most people don't know about they could send away for a free pack of cigarettes. She also informed me that it was in an obscure ad that hardly anyone ever saw. The strange things is how they found out about it.
They were informed about this promotional advertisement from, "that kid," which led to the obvious question, "What kid?" "I don't knooow, just that kid, he came around for a while but he's gone now."
Or something like that, she was getting annoyed with that conversation, but it was odd and I never forgot it, until I read Susan Linn and Juliet Schor's books and realized this was one of the early marketing strategies from the Tobacco Industry that they later used on all products selling to teens.
Juliet Schor and Susan Linn also both wrote about several peer marketing strategies including the "Girls Intelligence Agency," (additional details in an article below as well as Schor and Linn's books) where they recruit young girls, often through their mothers, who might not fully understand what they're doing to invite their friends over and introduce new products and find out how they react to it. The marketers learn how to more effectively manipulate children this way with little or no regard for their social development or it it might be inclined to start arguments among kids when marketing becomes more important than friendship.
This is just a small part of their strategies to manipulate people through the cool people in a crowd, who often get free merchandise if they wear them and pressure their friends to buy them.
Now after seeing Emma González on the cover of Time wearing those pathetic torn jeans and wearing them again during the rally, I can't help but wonder whether or not she's intentionally part of a marketing strategies, or if she fell for it without realizing it and the marketing industry is taking advantage of her naivete. The automatic response to that assumption might be she just chose to wear that all on her own, but those familiar with marketing strategies might know better, even though this simple assumption seems credible to most it is false.
I know I might be playing into trends of kids that like rebelling against adults; however that doesn't mean they like doing so by being scammed by corporations that are studying how to manipulate them for all the wrong reasons. Marketing disposable jeans that are made to look like they're the latest style even though they cost more than better quality jeans that last longer isn't something new; but the earliest attempts failed miserably because kids recognized it for what it was, an obvious scam.
The first time I remember they tried to market this style was about the time they came up with pre-washed jeans, which most kids probably never heard of; and therefore they don't know that even the regular jeans without tears in them to begin with lasted three to four times as long as modern jeans. When buying jeans you used to have to be careful to buy them one size too large because they would shrink when you washed them, but once you broke them in they lasted over ten years if you kept them in circulation. For kids that meant hand-me-downs, which was the only way to get the torn jeans look because they lasted so long and it was often the tough poorer kids that didn't brag about their torn jeans.
People warned each other at the time that this was what was happening but some bought the pre-washed jeans, even though the intentionally torn jeans were a flop. Eventually consumers forgot about that, but apparently the marketing industry didn't and they began recruiting celebrities and the modeling and fashion industry to flaunt the fashion over and over again. This includes give away's to trendsetters that Schor and Linn wrote about and kept at it targeting kids when they were little from the cradle, before anyone could warn them about these scams.
Somewhere along they even began taking advantage of moms that wanted to be cool; the idea that mom's should be a child's best friend used to be frowned on partly for good reason but the marketing industry took advantage of it and even tried to encourage it, which is why some of these cool moms even allowed the slumber parties for their children controlled by the marketing industry without too many questions about manipulating kids.
To make a long story short, after decades of relentless modeling by cool people with these pathetic torn jeans Emma González is the marketing industries dream come true, if she really is modeling for them without being recruited by them, not that I want to knock her for being deceived by the marketing industry after she became famous as a shooting survivor, but sweeping it under the rug only makes it worse which is what the marketing industry is counting on.
They may have also been thrilled a few years ago with the mother of a Baltimore teen who was protesting police brutality, who saw him on TV then went over beating him in front of a camera in a video that went viral. She was also wearing stylish torn jeans and other expensive clothes that looked cool; and she was portrayed by many as the "Mom of the year" by many people including the mass media. This woman was living in a low income area yet she spent a lot of money on flashy clothes and thought the best way to discipline her child was to humiliate him in front of a crowd and beat him. I don't want to knock her anymore than Emma, but even though the media loved it and tried to present it as a good way to address the problem, there were many people with better education that understood that this wasn't the appropriate way to teach them to stay out of trouble, especially since there was a major problem with police violence that she remained silent about. this included some black people that were more familiar with better ways to address the situation.
Regrettably we have lower income people that try to compensate for their poverty by making them feel good spending what little money they have on flashy clothes increasing poverty; and rich people that think it's stylish to look like they come from the ghetto wearing clothes that cost a ridiculous amount of money and falls apart fast, yet it looks like it's gasngsta' style or something. And this marketing distracts people from the fact that the products are made in sweatshops designed to increase poverty even more!
They want us to believe this is fashionable for the resistance or revolution!
It's not just some of us old people that realize this is a scam! Many people familiar with alternative media outlets and propaganda techniques know it too! Sincere reformers practically never get on TV and they certainly don't get obsession coverage the way David Hogg and some of these other Parkland kids are getting; if the media thought they might challenge the political establishment they support they wouldn't be providing them this amount of coverage!
Gun rights conspiracy theorist have been saying this is just another false flag fabricated to take away their guns. Most rational skeptics find extraordinary claims like this hard to believe without extraordinary evidence, especially since they don't even claim to want to take away all guns, just reasonable regulations for assault weapons and background checks to make sure fanatics can't buy them, and they've been doing this a long time, if the conspiracies are right yet they're failing miserably.
However even though there's no evidence that I know of to support these claims there is some evidence to indicate there's a fair amount of organization going on and that some of it is politically motivated, and more is for profit. There's also an amazing lack of discussion about many other issues including early child abuse leading to escalating violence later in life or any of the contributing causes of violence that might be the responsibility of the oligarchies that control the media and the advertiser that provide their profits
A search for March for our lives advertisements and March for our lives T Shirts shows that a large portion of them are a very similar style which strongly implies that there's a centralized organization structure for the advertising campaign. At least one of them is sponsored by the organization named after Gabby Giffords, which is a Democratic organization focused solely on gun control. The article mentioned previously about fund raising says that the money they collect is for the organization of the rally which almost certainly includes this massive advertising campaign that only mentions one of the contributing causes to violence.
This looks more like a political movement to transfer power back from the Republican arm of the Corporate government back to the other arm, which pretends to be Democratic, without educating the public about many of the other contributing causes of violence; and unless educators that do know more about these causes or real grassroots organizers, not to be confused with the AstroTurf routinely manufactured by the pseudo-Democratic Party to pretend to be part of the resistance do more to point out the problems with this massive propaganda campaign and replace it with education about all contributing causes of violence, this is guaranteed to be a failure that is, at best limited to a few gun control laws and transfer of power back to Democrats, without any more changes that need to be made to address the vast majority of the problem.
They even managed to make it seem as if anyone that questions this movement might be associated with Laura Ingraham or Steve King (the Iowa representative not horror writer) in part of an us versus them political environment where the entire crowd of people across the country seems to be acting like a massive cult, or at least that's the image presented by the media and the one this propaganda is trying to encourage. I don't doubt that if people discuss it at the local level there will be some that do much better; but unfortunately, unless there are some well informed people at the local level, there will be many people that do follow blindly like cult followers accomplishing nothing, and acting surprised the next time this happens.
As I said before the most important contributing cause of violence is almost certainly not deceptive advertising and I went into more important ones in Prevention of violence has to address all causes, not just Guns! which includes a list of other contributing causes and studies to show how they contribute to violence; however, advertising does distract from discussion of these contributing causes, and in some cases contributes more directly. The following are some of the sources cited for this article, including some that show how much violence is potentially caused partially by deceptive advertising:
Why One of the Parkland Teens Was Barefoot on the Cover of Time 03/22/2018 This article seems to imply that there was no effort by Time Magazine to stage this photo; however the conclusions were based on tweets they found on the internet not an in depth interview. It strikes me as odd that they seem to think there was a lot of talk about her bare feet but none about Emma González's torn jeans which looks much more like fashion modeling, and stands out much more.
“What about OUR kids?”: Inner-city gun control activists back Parkland teens despite feeling ignored 03/13/2018
A Recent History of Sneaker Violence 11/26/2014
1,200 people are killed each year over sneakers 11/20/2015 Clearly exaggerated, there are about 15,000 murders in the USA each year and the ones over sneakers aren't likely to be almost 7% but there are many more than most people are aware of!
The Sad Truth About Violence at Sneaker Stores 02/29/2016
Your Sneakers or Your Life
10 Charities Overpaying their For-Profit Fundraisers
Commercial fundraisers swallow millions meant for charity 02/01/2014
Parkland students have a cause and $3.5 million. Here’s how they’re going to spend it. 02/21/2018 “That’s where the money is going,” Jeff Kasky said. “They’re being directed by people with knowledge of how to responsibly spend this money and it’s going to be very transparent. Every penny is going to be accounted for.” People familiar with past problems with massive fundraising efforts might think carefully before making this claim.
Everything You Need to Know About the March for Our Lives 03/23/2018
11 Sandy Hook Families: We're Getting No Money From Tim McGraw Concert 04/22/2015
Sandy Hook Charities Raise $28 Million, Nearly Half Unspent 06/30/2014
Families of victims of Marysville-Pilchuck High School shooting settle lawsuit for $18 million 08/01/2017
Marketing To "Tweens" Going Too Far? 05/14/2007
"We have chosen these influencers across the country," says Girls Intelligence Agency CEO Laura Groppe, "and we have 40 to 50,000 of these girls registered."
The GIA carefully cultivates girls like Danielle, Smith observes, and designates them "secret agents."
The most important thing in a secret agent, says Groppe, is "that her peers trust her opinion. … We have to approve them. You know, important strategic business decisions are being made off of this 8-year-old and her friends, so we have to make sure she's the right one."
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"The marketers are inserting themselves into these peer dynamics," says Juliet Schor, author of "Born to Buy."
She says marketers such as GIA, and other companies like it, are over the top. The host girl is "being taught that her friends are an exploitable resource. … She needs to get those friends over there, get that information out of them."
"It seems a little sneaky to me," says Mary Beth Vazquez, of Kinnelon, N.J., the mother of a tween.
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