In this day and age I think that it is painfully
obvious what things manipulate us in our everyday lives. We see commercials and
advertisements and billboards and slogans that bombard us constantly with this
sense of unending want. We are surrounded by people and businesses and images
that make us feel like we are missing the next "must-have" product or
the newest convenience and the scary part is that we cave. We as a society have
caved to awesome selling power that is society. The biggest manipulator out
there is oneself.
We
are all victims, and not to say victims as we have all been perpetrated or
betrayed, but victims in the sense that we have all been affected. My manipulation
came in the form of a water bottle. When the semester started I never carried a
Nalgene. I would walk around campus not even thinking about getting a drink or
where a water fountain was, not to say that people generally know where water
fountains are, or that I was thirsty. Yet, as the semester went on I noticed
more and more Nalgenes. At the Climbing Wall where I work they are almost a
part of the scenery, everyone who works there has one. So I started carrying
one. It was simple and quick and it didn’t really leave me pondering my
decision, but it happened. But the beauty of it is that it solved a problem; a
problem that had never existed before. I think that is the true heart of
manipulation, to create a problem and then to solve it.
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