please empty your brain below

I would prefer to call this the desperate voice of a capitalism not selling as well as it would wish. It's not a million miles from the jovial hectoring coming from the mouth of the leader of the Theresa May party .......
Thank you DG,for this post. Most of what annoys me about today's advertising ploys are here.
I'm always being rebuked by 'im indoors for talking to tv adverts and news programmes. The use of 'we all know' or like, 'everbody thinks' etc etc ! NO! Not all of us! There are still a few of us who are able to think for ourselves.
By the way,anyone else out there who can hum old advertising jingles,but cannot remember what they were trying to sell? Or is that just me?🙄🙄
DG writing at its best!
Ha! I think the Guardian may be to blame for this one, it's used this style of writing - particularly in headlines and standfirsts on comment and culture pieces - for years.
@Brian: Spot on there. And the use of 'we', 'we all think that don't we?' etc. in all it's different forms makes the hard of thinking assume that is exactly what they should be thihking
this is what Trump does at his rallies.

He'll make a point, and then say to the crowd "You're all with me on this one, right, yes?" and wave a pointed finger at the crowd - and part of the crowd cheer, but then gives the impression that everyone agrees with what he's just said.

It's clever, and cunning - but also very evil.
When someone tells you what to think, you don't have to go to all the effort of thinking for yourself.

I can accept it (and ignore it) when it comes to advertising, but when it's relentlessly used as a tool by the media and politicians, it becomes creepily Orwellian.
I fear huge swathes of the country have effectively been brainwashed because of it.
This might be another side effect of mobile phones and text messaging where everything becomes increasingly informal, I'm as guilty as anyone in using text speak along with emoticons - but haven't succumbed to emojis yet, I'm sure these will be the next thing to sneak into formal language.

Dealing with people in their 20s, who have grown up with this stuff, there is very little border between formal and informal and public and private.

Having written the above, it occurred to me that it's like children's TV - where it's what shall 'we' look at/do/try etc., so there might be a proven physiological reason for it.
Thank you Diamondgeezer for giving form to a vague and non-specific irritation which had been growing in my mind when I read this kind of stuff seemingly everywhere.

The use of the conspiratorial 'we' has also ballooned in BBC documentaries in recent times. It was once fine to say "5 million tons of trifle are consumed in the UK every week" but now "we" have to eat them.

No thanks. I hate trifle.
Having never been in the "in crowd" and also having developed an aversion to "hype" all this advertising "nonsense" leaves me cold. I'm no doubt not the target demographic but I loathe being told what to do and think. I've stopped reading and buying any number of newspapers and magazines to get away from this form of speech. The same is also happening with my TV viewing - declining by the week to get away from silly news broadcasting and annoying adverts.

I do agree with the previous comment about needing to be able to distinguish between formal and informal, public and private. At some point all this social media driven stuff will have horrible consequences for people when their past is dragged up and put on display. We already have it with cyber bullying and digging around Facebook but give the media (and governments) a few more years and almost anyone's "digital footprints" will be capable of use for praise, humiliation and destruction of an individual.
Funny, I must be atypical - I read the line "Do you like xxx?", think "nope" and stop reading. Perhaps I don't feel the need to be one of the 'in' crowd. Anyway, many thanks for the psychology lesson, I know now to avoid this time of approach and ignore invites to go on "tone of voice" training.
When you put things in those terms, presumably the advertisers have learned and evolved their methods from observing their surroundings.
For some time now, there has been the "horizontal communication" where people have taken photos of their lunch (or whatever) and shared them with, well, pretty much everyone they know.
Don't ask me why, but maybe the advertisers have got around to thinking that horizontal might work better than vertical?
I find it cheesy and awful - but then I find most writing pretty awful. I tend to search through for any tidbit that interests me and discard the rest. If no tidbit is intrinsically interesting then I move on. Gin is fashionable and faddish. I like it, but not enough to get excited about. This, Pão de Queijo, on the other hand, is new and I want to try it. Therefore I will....
This "we all think this, don't we" meme crept into the C of E several decades ago, (it may have even started there) with the replacement of the traditional and personal "I believe in one God" by the first person plural.
The change from "I believe" to "We believe" is not limited just to the Church of England. Though logically, a crowd of people, saying "I believe..." together is making just the same assertion as the same crowd saying "We believe...".

But of course a spoken phrase like that does not only have a logical meaning. It also has all sorts of connotations, and the connotations, and the effect of the saying, could be quite different.

But the advertising/patronising/teacher's use of "we" is rather different. It is often used, as in the Trump phrase cited, when the speaker knows full well that the assertion is not true for the whole audience. And that does strike me as a persuasion too far.

All language is persuasive, of course. Even a plain assertion like "I am hungry" is only made because the speaker wants hearers to believe that s/he is hungry. Otherwise someone wouldn't bother uttering it.
'We-speak' aims to make us part of an identity, never having to think again.

Jo W's point about the jingle but not the product: the booze adverts with Leonard Rossiter and Joan Collins were remembered by many but not what they were promoting.

Marketing is unavoidable and insidious - trying to convince you that I know what I'm talking about, and then that I have a bridge you'd be nuts not to buy.
Hi Mr. Geezer

Stop slagging us off. We promoted you for years.

Keep on truckin'
Hi Fake Commenter

None of today's quotes is from Londonist.
Sounded more like the Evening Standard to me.
Bit of an own goal from Londonist there? Why should they think you were digging at them? (My money was on Time Out).

Does anyone think it's a bit like the more manic happy-clappy religion? I know I do (apols. to Alan Bennett).
Excellent post DG. The other one that annoys me is the use of 'your' on signage. For example, 'help to keep your train tidy' or 'support your NHS'. What's wrong with the definite article? I suppose the aim is to appear inclusive but it's just annoying.
I agree with the above. I first noticed "your" in estate agents ("this is your kitchen" - no it isn't, I don't live here!) and other sales pitch type professions, but it has spread to pretty much everything "they" want us to take a communal interest in. Hate it!

And don't get me started on "at the minute" being used instead of "at the moment"....!!!
"Fancy a trip to the Caribbean? Yeah, us too. But now you can get a taste of the Caribbean without leaving the M25."

"As every Londoner knows, there’s much satisfaction to be had in scoffing char-crusted pizzas from citywide Neapolitan pie-oneers (arf!) Franco Manca."

@Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells
" For example, 'help to keep your train tidy'
It used to be mine, until it was sold to Porterbrook in 1994. If Corbyn wins, I might even get it back!

@Malcolm
" Though logically, a crowd of people, saying "I believe..." together is making just the same assertion as the same crowd saying "We believe..."."

Not at all - the singular pronoun makes it a personal affirmation by each and every individual.
And I am quite sure that there are as many individual ideas of what God is as there are people present, so they do not all believe in "one" God. I have no idea whether your idea of God is the same as mine, and would not presume to speak for you.
The "evangelical atheist" Richard Dawkins has a very clear concept of the nature of the God he doesn't believe in. Whether anyone else believes God is like Dawkin's concept of God is an interesting question.
(And is Richard Dawkins real?)
We’ve all done silly things after one too many G&Ts. Nicked traffic cones. Texted our exes. Climbed into a stranger’s garden and fallen asleep in their vegetable patch while dressed as a hotdog. No?










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