The Happy Medium

I wonder about social media.  Everyone is selling something, an idea, a get rich quick scheme, a weight loss thing, a service.  I just wonder though, with everyone selling, who's buying?

 

Americans have gone from being citizens to being consumers now to being salespeople.  Where's the happy medium where some buy and some sell, with each group doing so some of the time? Instead we seem to be in this weird place where everyone's selling all the time.  I saw an article yesterday about the competition for our eyeballs.  My attitude frankly, is that you can have my eyeballs but my mind you won't get not at any price.  Sorry.  Gotta draw the line somewhere.

The pendulum in this society seems to swing from one extreme to the next.  We've gone from too many buyers mostly buying what they can't really afford, to too many sellers, mostly selling 'product' of dubious value.  A healthy economy it would seem to me, is a mix, a happy medium as it were, where there are sellers and buyers aplenty, making available and consuming products of known and reliable value;  where there is some order to the disorder of the marketplace and where the rules of engagement are well known.  I don't get the sense that there are rules, or that they are particularly well known, but maybe I just don't see the order in the chaos.  Seems more like a festival celebrating Bacchus (the Greek god of confusion) to me.  The market looks to be a bit of a bacchanal to me.

I appreciate that the modus operandi here is to allow the markets to sort themselves out and perhaps that works, but there seems to me to be a lot of noise out there masquerading as 'marketing' for products no better than one of Dr. Dulcamara's* potions. Acai berry anyone?

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*Dr. Dulcamara: a character in Gaetano Donizetti's opera, L'Elisir D'Amore (The Elixir of Love).  Dulcamara is a quack whose great claim to fame is that he sells said elixir to the tenor lead (Nemorino) which the tenor hopes will help him to win the heart of Adina (the soprano character).  Nemorino does win the girl, but it's not on account of the potion, though I doubt anyone would be able to convince Dulcamara that he wasn't responsible for Nemorino's success.