Fear is Getting Pretty Expensive Nowadays
How to shop for a conscience.
I don’t usually like to brag, but I once worked for a company that ran ads aimed squarely at older, white American men—the kind who watched the History Channel back when it shifted from WWII documentaries to Ancient Aliens. You get the picture.
Our ad campaigns were divided into two straightforward categories: “fear” and “greed.” Simple as that. And before you laugh and ask what kind of back alley operation this was—well, sadly, it worked. This company was booming, pulling in around a billion dollars a year.1
On Election Night 2016, I found myself in a classroom, staring at a screen—not watching history unfold with loved ones, but counting how many people had clicked on a picture of avocado toast. It was part of a night course on “first-party data,” which is really just a fancy way of saying we were learning to track people’s every online move and nudge them toward whatever action we wanted. The timing was… poetic.
When I left class and checked my phone, I was stunned. But there wasn’t much time to process it—I had to rush home and prep for an important work meeting the next morning.