Publicity and the Feed
Publicity was Berger's word for advertising, chosen deliberately because it named the function rather than the industry. Publicity does not sell products. Publicity sells anxiety. The image shows the viewer a version of herself she could become — more beautiful, more successful, more desired — if she acquired the advertised product. The image works not by satisfying desire but by manufacturing dissatisfaction. It proposes that the present self is inadequate and that the product is the bridge between the inadequate self and the desirable future self. The purchase is the action the anxiety produces, but the anxiety is the product.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Berger's mechanism — publicity is always about the future buyer — operates in the algorithmic feed at a scale and precision he could not have imagined. Where the billboard addressed a general audience with a general message, the feed addresses a specific individual with a