The Algorithm of Evil | Cassandra Voices

He gave the illusion of autonomy—because that’s how people think desire works. Models are most powerful when they are hidden. If you want to make someone passionate about something, they have to believe the desire is their own.

Once a “want” becomes firmly lodged in a modern shopper’s brain, they are not able to focus their mind on much else. The “want” has been transformed into a “want-need.”

This doesn’t mean we can easily abandon them though, but rather that marketing, social pressure, the expectation that our identity be expressed through consumption (and the evisceration of other avenues for its expression) conspire to make these ‘needs’ feel urgent and deep.

He argues that humans do not themselves know what to desire; as a result, they imitate the desires of others.