Manipulation Everywhere

As I was planning my mediaTED artifact, I began to really think about how prevalent manipulation techniques were outside of the writer's power. The first thing that came into my mind was, brand names. As a consumer of many different brand names, I find it really absurd at how over price some things are. For example, when I went to Target several years back, I walked by the shoe section and noticed that there were shoes that looked just like Converse. When I looked carefully at the shoe, I noticed that everything looked almost the same, except that the logo was different and placed in a different place. Along with that, the name of the Target brand shoe was Converse ONE STAR instead of Converse ALL STAR. However, the Converse All Star was retailed at $50 and the Converse One star was retailed at $35. Recollecting that moment and relating it to the course, I found it very amusing that two almost same shoes were priced so differently just for the name brand. However, by saying so I am a hypo crypt because if were to choose between the two, I would choose the Converse All Star. Due to the consumer manipulation, i think of the Converse All Star as the "real" thing, and the Converse One Star is the "fake" version. However, in reality they are just two different brands with very similar products and designs. This occurs not only in shoe brands, but also the fashion industry as a whole! Without these manipulation techniques of making people think one thing is better because its "original" brands would not be able to skyrocket their prices to form a monopoly. However, at this point this form of thinking has been basically implanted into our brains as a subconscious thought on what is "good" and what is "bad".