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Edited by Martin Cadwell, Tuesday 31 March 2026 at 05:21

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I want to be fooled

I recently read that it is almost impossible to make someone want something they don't already desire. I studied marketing for two reasons: because I needed it in my business, and I wanted to be able to undo the work of the nasty, puppet-masters in the shadows. 

I read that people cannot be forced to buy anything they don't desire. I don't believe this for one minute. I think it is a short-sighted fool who believes this. I never desired a mobile phone (cell phone) or a home computer until they were marketed. When farmers were polled at the turn of the nineteenth century as to what they desired, they said, 'a faster horse'. Henry Ford sold them the internal combustion engine. Now, farmers want better tractors and trucks. Offer a fast horse to a farmer and he thinks about whether he has a daughter or a sporting neighbor, or not.

I still don't relish having a mobile phone (cell phone) and I never crave a faster computer; just smaller operating systems. I desire what we had in the past. That is called nostalgia. We all get it; it is incurable. 

It is true that I would not be forced to buy a time-machine to go back in time and do nefarious things to make sure the mobile phone never evolved beyond a phone without a wire plugged into a wall. I MUST own a mobile phone because they were so successfully sold to the world in the first place, by marketers. I am not forced by today's marketers to buy a new amazing mobile phone (cell phone); I am forced to buy a second-hand phone both because we now have to all have one, and because I absolutely do not want any phone that has A.I. in its operating code from the outset. There is no reset that eliminates and removes all the crazy updates that new phones allow, to reset it to A.I. free, because its code positively seeks more A.I. updates.

Modern marketing seems to be ever-seeking the next thing to sell. It doesn't seem to try to sell us what we once had. Go into any UK village in 2026 and you will see a bunch of outsiders updating the village. They don't preserve it. They visited and loved the village. Oh wow! they said, This is heaven. Lets change it!

The dispensing pharmacist at my local doctor's surgery wanted to talk to me about my blood-pressure and cholesterol levels and how I could have stats (an update or a patch to fix a bug in my human software?) I have high blood pressure because I am stressed and don't get appropriate treatment. Even if I do have high cholesterol levels, it is probably because I eat too many free eggs. Of course, the 'chat' was necessary to the pharmacist because I was weighed by my doctor more than three years ago, and I was very slightly overweight according to the Body Mass Index (BMI) chart. Most people are so used to aimlessly being updated that they think they desire it. I don't think they do. I think it is like asking an alcoholic if they want a drink; they will invariably shake their heads as they say yes, we just can't process two things at the same time. 

     'Are you in a relationship?'

     'It's complicated.'

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