One of the coolest things about where I work is the mission. We’re talking truly life-transforming and belief-shaping. Pornography is the easiest example. Before I started at my job, I found it morally objectionable but was personally ambivalent for non-Christians. (This is my default stance on many issues: I may find a behavior objectionable, but I’m not going to force someone who doesn’t share the basic tenants of my faith to live under my moral code.) Now, almost two years later, my opinions on porn are much more closely aligned with my opinions on drugs. In short: “NOOO DON’T DO IT YOU’RE RUINING YOUR BRAIN YOU WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO HAVE A HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP STOP WATCHING IT NAOW!” Seriously. There’s a ton of science behind why it’s just about one of the worst things you can do to yourself sexually.

*climbs off soapbox*

So the point of that whole tirade is really to say that I get to dig into a lot of really fascinating issues regarding the brain and social trends. For example, 9 months ago or so I wrote an article about advertising. Fun fact: A lot of advertising standards changed in 1983. I was one year old. So I’m a member of a generation raised under Pavlovian advertising conditions. Advertisers got their hooks into me (us) at a young age and built brand loyalty into us before we even knew what it was.

See also: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. If you know me at all, you know I have a great affection for this show. In fact, it’s one of only two shows I watch (the other is NBC’s Community, which totally deserves its own blog post because it is Just. That. Awesome.)

Anyway. My Little Pony. I have fond memories of the old show. Some of my favorite toys were My Little Ponies. I have a traumatic memory of giving away my favorite My Little Pony ever because I had a misguided concept of sacrifice when I was 8. (By the way, if anyone ever wants to give me a vintage Glory My Little Pony, you’d be my hero for, like, ever.)

And now, as an almost-30 adult, I still watch My Little Pony and buy the toys for myself my niece myself and my niece. And next time McDonald’s offers them as a Happy Meal toy, I am totally going to buy a bajillion Happy Meals. (Also, a hamburger happy meal with Diet Coke is only 13 points on Weight Watchers, so it’s sort of healthy. And cheaper. And comes with a toy.)

Again, I degress. My point is this: A 29-year-old single woman should not be going out of her way to watch a show for 7-year-olds. Yet here I am. Why? Because, in part, advertisers got their hooks on me, saying if you like this cool product you should give us all of your monies forever in order to buy derivative products forevarz. (The fact that current-gen My Little Pony toys are kind of ugly has saved me a ton of money. No joke.)

Is it fair to blame advertisers for my personal desire to own every cool fan-made My Little Pony or Community t-shirt ever created? No and yes. There’s personal responsibility, certainly. On the other hand, my admittedly limited research leads me to the conclusion that there’s something to be said for the whole idea that kids these days have a horrible sense of entitlement. We’re the boomerang generation; we stay with Mom and Dad well after the age our parents would have married and had kids; we waste our lives playing video games and buying toys and stupid t-shirts. And advertisers are at least partially to blame in a very Pavlovian sense.

Without further ado, here’s the article that I wrote for the June 2011 issue of Pure Minds Online.

Sold for Life: How Advertisers Influence Children, and What You Can Do About It

You’ve no doubt seen the kid in the grocery store, throwing a temper tantrum because his parents wouldn’t buy him the new toy or candy he wanted. Maybe you’ve even been that parent, and you know the sting of the dirty looks for not giving up and buying your child the treat, just to get him to calm down.

Or maybe you know a boy whose love for Spider-Man extends so far that his bedroom is decorated solely in that theme, and he’ll only eat Spider-Man mac and cheese because it “tastes better.”

Perhaps you’ve even seen a group of 5-year-old girls celebrating a birthday with pedicures at a salon.

The common thread to these is not bad parenting, as some people may be quick to assume. The common thread is advertising. Marketers are doing everything in their power to influence your purchases through your children.

Read the rest of the article…

I have empathy for the guy who designed the cake. I’ve had font errors before, especially when working with free fonts. Fortunately thus far, none have gone to print (though I did send a PDF to a prof once with only half the fonts embedded; at least I caught that problem quickly).

Professional editors and designers, of course, know the solution to this (stick with standard fonts, create outlines of special fonts, package the fonts with the document when you send it to print, have a good editorial process in place to catch problems, etc.). But if you’re not a designer–if you’re not trained to think about these things–what do you do?

Simple: Don’t. Be. Lazy. Remember grade school, where they taught you to check your work? Yeah, it’s kind of like that. Had the person who ordered this cake, for example, chosen to deliver the printout in person instead of through e-mail, he would have saved himself some pain off the bat.

There’s a similar rule for the decorator, of course: If it looks like a mistake, it probably is. We’re all sound and fury here; we are quick to notice others’ mistakes, and probably quick to rip them a new one to the rest of the world, but we’re not so willing to actually call them out and ask, “Hey, was this supposed to be like this?” Maybe as an editor I’m a unique case in this, but I know that not only do I make mistakes, I’m also bad at catching my own. But I can’t improve if I’m not aware there’s a problem.

I remember sitting at the lunch table one day in middle school with my friends. One of them had a rather large booger in her nose for a good 15 minutes before she finally discovered it. And here’s the thing–all of us, and there were six or seven of us at the table–noticed it. And we said nothing. And when she finally noticed it and one of us mentioned that it had been there for a while, she got (rightly) mad at us for not pointing it out sooner. Because really, yes, it would have been embarrassing to her to have it pointed out, but I firmly believe that it was more embarrassing that it wasn’t.

In short: everything in life needs editing. The best editors in the world still need someone to edit them. So no matter who you are, if you see something that you know can be fixed, say something while it’s still fixable. You may step on a few toes, sure, but more often than not the person will be grateful for the advice.

My goodness, people. This is why writing centers and editors exist. Let me give anyone who wants to use a site like that a hint: academic writing is about clarity and organization. If you can explain your research to these people, you can save yourself $20/page and write minimally your own first draft. I won’t deny the need for corporate professional writers… but it strikes me as unethical to pay someone for a paper that you’ll then get graded on. It’s called “credit where credit is due.” Seriously. Learn it before you enter the corporate world.