Admongo

11 May 2010 at 8:30 am Dick Langlois 4 comments

| Dick Langlois |

Slate has a piece on a video game called Admongo, which the Federal Trade Commission has created to teach children the dangers of commercial advertising. Characteristically, the author rather likes this idea, and the only criticism of this micro-Orwellianism he can imagine is that it doesn’t go far enough in bashing commercial advertising and is fact in bed with commercial interests like Scholastic.

Entry filed under: - Langlois -, Ephemera, Public Policy / Political Economy.

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4 Comments Add your own

1. Peter Klein | 11 May 2010 at 9:36 am

I’m sure the game warning kids about the dangers of political advertising is just around the corner. (As soon as they finish the “Rock the Vote” campaign.)
2. Randy | 11 May 2010 at 10:37 am

Thank you, Nanny State!

Wait for the “find the transfats” game coming next.
3. Gregory Rehmke | 11 May 2010 at 4:19 pm

The NATO website has had games for kids too. I can only find one on the site today: http://www.nato.int/multi/mapgame/indexen.html

Kids and drag flags to the appropriate countries. Apparently Ukraine is a “Partnership for Peace (PFP) country, for example.

NATO policy was a homeschool debate topic a few years ago. Their website listed many interesting programs, like a NATO landscaping conference and youth camps for Danish kids.
4. Michael E. Marotta | 12 May 2010 at 11:15 am

The game is too slow and pokey for real kids.

Also, they missed the advertising on the Mailbox (USPS logo, times of pick-ups) and they never gave credit for identifying the AdMongo advertising.

I wonder if any kids will be motivated to go into advertising. I mean, look at the power… supposedly… A couple of semesters ago, I took a class in Deviance (required for both criminology and sociology) and we watched a lot of movies, including THANK YOU FOR SMOKING. I cheered Nick Naylor.

If advertising really had any power over people, there would be exactly one brand of everything.

I had a few minutes to spend at the university library between buses, and I looked for titles about Ethics in Resarch — something I am thinking of pursuing for a doctorate — and I judged all of the books by their covers. The titles were crafted to induce me to read — Science on Trial… The Myth of Reality… Why not just call them Book 10214 and Book 10215 and Book 10216…

Far as I can tell, campaigns against advertising are like conventions of anarchists.