For a few years I have wanted a fitness watch of some kind to track my rigorous amounts of activity at the keyboard each day, but I have never been able to warrant buying one, til today. What tipped me over the edge was last night's post by Asher on his own purchase of a watch and I went down the same path and got the Amazfit GTR - so now we can be watch buddies!
As said, it was the post that pushed me over the edge, but I have been "edging" for a fair while already and over the last few weeks, there have been little pokes and prods trying to get me to shoot my load and part with my hard earned money. Well earned money, I have desk jobs - so it isn't exactly climbing Everest - but I do think a lot - something that watch probably doesn't measure for.
I think that if a watch could measure mental activity, people might be surprised how much they think. If it also measured the quality of thought and the importance of topic - that would be another matter entirely. "Congratulations, you completed your 10,000 mental steps today! But only 27 of them count as valuable."
I digress.
So, I went and bought the watch, synced it up to my phone and it is charging.
What is interesting in this for me is that since we don't get junk mail advertisements, I don't read magazines or newspapers, I don't randomly consume from the internet or scroll mindlessly through social media feeds other than Hive (which isn't mindless), the exposure to advertising is very limited. Instead, my purchase appetizers come through the relationships I have.
With the watch for example, over the last couple of weeks I have been around colleagues and friends who have mentioned watches and compared brands and the like, even though they don't know I run (as looking at me at the moment might not be a give away). It is important to them though and over the last few months, it has become more so as they have been looking for more outdoor activity since lockdown started.
For me, this feels like a much more organic process of getting information that is relevant to me and I liken it to having a party where people can bring a friend. I am more likely to have something in common and like a person who is a friend of a friend I already like. It is a handshake introduction from someone I already trust - a web of trust.
In my experience, social proofing is the strongest and stickiest form of advertising, as it plays on the historical relationship of those involved, rather than being a cold call or passive browse scenario. Of course, if I did browse social media like a normal person, after my search for the watch online, my feed would fill with advertisements pushing the watch so it was continually in my eyeline.
People say they aren't affected by internet advertising, but the truth is that if it didn't work as well as it does, the advertisers wouldn't be paying what they do for it. When the first instances of the future decision to buy are introduced from a social group, the advertisements become far more acceptable and many people even welcome them into their lives out of convenience.
However, I know that while I don't browse a lot of advertisement real estate, my peer group does, and then the chicken or egg scenario comes into play. Which is the real catalyst for my purchase, the person who buys and shares their experience, or the advertisement seen by that person - and if they are someone of social influence, people are more likely to follow suit. For example, one of my friends last week at a barbecue was talking about trackers and while he has a very good one, as long as a watch is pretty decent and does an adequate job, it will be fine.
This is because like most people these days, even if we don't know it, we are gamifying and tokenizing our experience by introducing the tracking of our activities, keeping score, so to speak. On top of this, we are integrating our experience to compare them to others in our peer group (even if strangers we don't know) and seeing where we lay on the curve, are we better or worse - and no one wants to be below average - so we take a few more steps, got to bed a little earlier, eat a salad instead.
There are so many psychological factors clustered around consumer decision making itself, it is hard to encapsulate. Then once we layer social proofing factors, peer group pressures and cultural conditioning over the top, it is a very dynamic matrix for anyone to truly understand to the level that they can always know when they are being manipulated. Well, it is actually pretty easy, as we are always being manipulated, and those who believe they aren't or can catch every instance, are likely the most conditioned of the flock.
What I think though, is that while a lot of harm can be done through social engineering as the incentives from "suppliers" looks to maximize profit at any cost, a lot of good can come from it too. I wonder if the social energy that for example is put into a protest, riot and looting, was instead put into daily activities toward improving the environment and culture, if things would improve without the need for centralized dictation.
What I do know through my own experiences is that our peer groups have massive impacts on who we are and how we behave and again, I am not sure if it is a chicken or the egg scenario - do birds of a feather flock together, or does experience of peer groups keep them together? When you are out walking on the streets next time, take note of groups of people walking together and see if there are similarities in the way they dress or their body type...
But we are all individuals, right?
While the harm can be great, if we as individuals engineer our own environment to better suit who we are and support where we want to go from this day forward, we are far more likely to actually get there, or get closer to there. Reaching goals is not done through buying a gadget though, it is done through the activity performed toward that end and while some gadgets will encourage activity, others will compete for the energy and time in another area. This is part of the gamification too perhaps.
In my opinion, who we surround ourselves with matters an enormous amount, as we start to mimic our peers in appearance and behavior and therefore, want much of the same as them and get similar results to them. For me, social proof has validity power because I spend time building trusted relationships with people from a lot of backgrounds and skill groups, that I can use as my reference group, for times I am uncertain or need a second opinion. This doesn't only affect the purchases I make, but it also impacts on my thoughts and mindset and at times, paradigm shifts can happen.
If the mind doesn't change, what does?
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]