SMRT: Welcome to the Age of Faux Expertise

One of the most painful aspects of growing older is the slow sinking realization that I am not so smart. When I was a kid, school was easy and adults were always telling me how smart I was, and man did I believe them. I believed them hard, and my ongoing ability to achieve academic – well, success is too strong a word, more like mediocrity – despite a lack of interest, effort, or even reading the books I was assigned just reinforced it.

As I’ve gotten older, though, one thing has become very, very clear: I may not be stupid, but I am also not smart. Also, I am lazy and have no fashion sense, but these facts have never been in dispute and have also never been controversial in any way.

However, despite not being very smart, I am smart enough to know when commercials and other advertising is wanking me off. And it’s irritating, especially this new breed of Faux Expert come ons.

You Are Not an Expert, Brah

Advertising has always been about flattering its audience. One of the simplest psychological tricks anyone can use to get you on their side is to flatter your intelligence, suggesting that of course you get what they’re talking about, because you are witty/urbane/intelligent/tasteful.

That’s not new. What is new is how the Internet Age is now giving us commercials that literally flatter your desire to be smarter than everyone in the room.

Google has made all of us into shitty experts, after all. You might imagine that when I write these insane essays for this insane zine that only exists as a digital ghost of its former self that I’m drawing on my own huge brain and store of memories, book-learnin’, and skills. In reality I know almost nothing and rely almost exclusively on the Internet for the illusion of wisdom – the ability to look things up makes us all able to be trivia kings, doesn’t it?

What it’s also done is given us the illusion that expertise is merely a function of information. In short, we all seem to think that if we have a few crucial pieces of information, we can do anything.

We’re wrong, of course, but advertising is making a killing pretending otherwise.

Your FICA Score is Worthless

There are two commercials I’m thinking about in terms of this appeal to our intellectual vanity.

YOU SMUG BASTARD

In the first, a smug, portly, hipster-ish dude tells us how hard it is to know that you’re getting a good deal on a new car, then suggests that if you use a certain website you’ll be able to find out the “true value” of any car, including a range of great-but-rare prices and typical-and-ripoff prices. The idea is that with thirty seconds of information you’ll be able to swagger into any car dealership and get the best deal on a new car ever.

The truth, of course, is that car salespeople could give less of a shit what some website says the car is worth. They’ve been trained in handling people like you, and some printout you’ve brought folded up in your pocket is not going to destroy their argument. But we’d all like to think that just knowing how shit works enables us to master a situation, when the fact is that’s just part of it. The other part is all that boring training and learning, and experience. Which we don’t have, so your “true value” number is worthless the moment the salesman fixes their steely insectoid antennae on you.

The other commercial shows a couple at a bank looking for a mortgage, and is basically the same principle: The wife has been shown her FICA credit score, and thus tells the smug banker that she knows exactly how good her credit is, so he better start working harder for her business.

Sure. Banks do, indeed, consider FICA scores when deciding whether or not to loan you hundreds of thousands of dollars. But if you imagine simply knowing that you have good credit will somehow make it easier to get a mortgage or get you a better rate like magic, you’re kidding yourself.

Psyche 101

The psychology of these commercials is obvious, too: Buying a car and negotiating a deal is still considered a male job, but the wimpy guy in the commercial likely speaks to wimpy guys like me who are confrontation-adverse and would love it if knowing the true value of a car made negotiating with the slick salesman easier. And the housefrau depicted in the mortgage commercial is aimed at women who find themselves always dealing with pompous asshole men who call them “Sweetheart” and act like their tiny female brains are too small to comprehend something like a mortgage, so having an edge is very appealing to them.

And overall, the psychology applies to all of us: We’d all like to imagine that just because we have Google in our pockets, we’re now geniuses and super-villains. When we’re really just assholes with smartphones.