Ad-driven desires are false needs producing euphoria in unhappiness

Evidence

We may distinguish both true and false needs. “False” are those which are superimposed upon the individual by particular social interests in his repression: the needs which perpetuate toil, aggressiveness, misery, and injustice. Their satisfaction might be most gratifying to the individual, but this happiness is not a condition which has to be maintained and protected if it serves to arrest the development of the ability (his own and others) to recognize the disease of the whole and grasp the chances of curing the disease. The result then is euphoria in unhappiness. Most of the prevailing needs to relax, to have fun, to behave and consume in accordance with the advertisements, to love and hate what others love and hate, belong to this category of false needs. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 114

Categorization

• DEFINE: The crucial true/false-needs distinction, the load-bearing concept for the consumption-as-control thesis.
• XREF: Bridges directly to the attention economy: algorithmic consumption as false-need satisfaction. — connects to: Desire proves human reality is constituted as a lack — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 354; Modern advertising manipulates desires through images largely unconnected to the product. — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 1819; The image of uninhibited vitality itself recycles commodity fetishism (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• The image of uninhibited vitality itself recycles commodity fetishism #complicates (0.80)