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The Creation of "Fan" Sites
jmoore writes "Nothing new that movie makers will do anything to make money from their movies. However, what about making false fan sites to boost a movies image? I couldn't belive it, but sadly it dosen't suprise me much. how depressing." The hype Blair Witch got, as the article points out made the movie industry understand how powerful "grass roots" really is. Reminds me of the Levi jeans pages modeled on the "I kiss you!" guy that people thought were real as well. Ah, marketing.
Well I agree whole-heartedly, but most people probably think I'm a little to extreme in my reasons. See, personally, I find it appalling that businesses are even allowed to take this sort of aggressive stance. It ticks me off just to see commercials that are directly targetting children in a manipulative 'buy-me-to-fit-in-at-school' sort of way. I don't believe that corporations are people, and I don't believe they have rights that people have. The people who comprise those companies, of course, have every right that anyone else does. Even the founding fathers understood this. Before the early 1900's, and before commercialization became the norm, it was illegal for corporations to give any money to politicians. I don't have a quote offhand, but all the way back to the 1700's Benjamin Franklin himself would talk about how restrictions on money, and restrictions on ownership of media (that existed before the Telecommunications Act of 1996), were paramount to preserving a democracy. Otherwise a business like his own newspaper could manipulate the government and monopolize the only medium through which people could ever hear about it.
/vent
But that's what what we have now, and it got that way through compromise after compromise, supposedly in the name of freedom and capitalism. The problem is that the public can't compete with the mechanized efficiency of big business. Microsoft lobbyists are formed up on capitol hill pushing UCITA while most Americans are at home watching MicroSoft NBC's latest incitefull coverage of some tear-jerking tale of loss and eventual triumph over something or other.
Enough already. These multinational corporations do business in places where the constitution means nothing, and human rights are non-existent. They're not our friends, they're not human beings with common sense, or even morals. Obviously they've proven my point; a business is operated by individuals, but it has no conscience, it acts as a machine would to achieve maximum efficiency. Anyone who's familiar with the term 'soft money' or 'corporate welfare' should understand what we're dealing with these days. The 'American People' and 'Corporate America' can't exist as equals, when the second of the two is dominant in it's very nature. Corporate America has to take the subserviant role, and not because the bill of rights is subjective -- but because when they don't, the rights of the public and the rights of the same people at the helm of Corporate America, get squelched.