Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected]
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
The algorithm is pushing that content because you either interact more with it or spend longer time scrolling by. Pictures of beautiful women will always dominate the social media, because everyone regardless of gender and age are biologically conditioned to look at them.
Don't be fooled into believing that anything on social media is remotely close to reality. It's absolutely not a reason for anyone to make life changing decisions. You need to make those decisions based in reality.
If you're into cosplay, fashion, modelling or photography, you should try seeing it in real life to acknowledge how incredibly dull it is to make those perfect pictures.
But also, yes, most dudes are generally less interested in appearing visually hot. It's mostly bodybuilders who post their beefcakes to impress people on social media. It's so vain and lacking in confidence in my opinion. I don't need large muscles to feel manly. To me "manliness" is more about being confident. Not by slacking off and just not caring, but by paying attention to details and understanding how what I wear is fitting me in the situation.
If you have an actual interest in male fashion, you can easily find that content. There's no reason why you should feel lame or boring for being a man. There are lots of things you can play with to make a great personal look. For instance I'd start out by ditching the classic safe white or blue shirts and get something with more colours and made from a finer fabric. It will instantly make you stand out from the guys who just wear what their wife brought home.
Sorry but this is bullshit. Images of women dominate social media because men with power (and money) tend to like looking at them. I may not be socially conditioned to treat men as objects but the lack of choice this society affords me does not somehow mean I have the same visual preferences as the men who dictate my world.
No, it's not (just) because horny old rich men like watching it.
Images of beautiful women dominate social media because it works in marketing. They wouldn't do it if it didn't work.
It's not at all about what you prefer watching. Preferably you'd want to avoid watching marketing all together. No, it's about what makes you buy stuff.
Most marketing is directed at women (even for men products) because the purchase decisions are mostly done by women in the moment of sales. Using beautiful women in marketing simply sells better.
Now you're mixing up "what marketers think works" with the much broader category of "images on social media".
What marketing departments dominated by men think works is not the same thing as what actually works is not the same thing as what gets put on social media.
In this case, isn't it because the market evolved faster than they could keep up with? Probably there was a time where most of their customers were "macho men", so these adds would work in marketing.
That is the assumption. But that does not mean it is true.
I posted an example of the tyre company before. The other example I can't find is the blog by a guy who rented two stalls at either end of the same conference, staffed one with models and the other with local grandmothers. The grandmothers did much more business. It's the salesmen who want the stall staffed with models, not the customers.
The evidence-base of sales & marketing is dismal to non-existent.
Could you link the evidence-base of this though?
Could you read the post though?
Ok I realise that I did not put the previous comment in the friendliest form, sorry about that !
Your point is that the marketing choice of using beautiful women is dictated by the sellers' preferences rather that the buyers' one. In the apparent absence of evidence to support either hypothesis, you are willing to favor the former one.
What I haven't said explicitly yet is that there is one argument that makes me find the latter one more likely in the absence of further evidence : the businesses that make their marketing choices based on customers' preferences will tend to survive more. kn our capitalist society, it makes sense to me.
You gave one counter-example that is not strong enough to change my opinion as it can also be explained with the firm having poorly evaluated what their target audience was. They do say in the article that more women started buying tyres after the marketing change, which is indeed not the audience targeted with the sexy-girl ad.
It does however a good job at disproving the affirmation "because everyone regardless of gender and age are biologically conditioned to look at them." to which you were originally replying, and I disagree with that affirmation as well. I just think your conclusion goes too far i the other direction, in the absence of further evidence.
Like I said, the evidence-base is near non-existent. But you can't look at decisions foisted on us almost exclusively by sales types and assume that means it works because they know what they're doing.
It was a tech conference attended almost exclusively by men.
I wish I could find the article now. But (some of) what he said was that the models attracted sleaze balls who were there to have a jolly, not to do business. Stall busy, order book empty. And that the local grandmothers did so well because they could recommend local restaurants and leisure activities and did not make the company look like it only wanted to do business with sleaze balls. Stall busy, order book full.
He also said that it was the sales men (specifically, men) who demanded they employ models because they wanted to spend all day hanging out with models being sleaze balls, not because there was any evidence that it improved business (hence, the test).
The one example I was commenting about is the tyre example. They sold more tyres to women after dropping the sexy girl on the ad. How much of a stretch is it to assume that these women were not the sexy ad's target audience because women used to be less (socially allowed to get) interested in cars?