Marketers work hard to drive people to purchase their products and services. They create content, drive eyeballs, offer free incentives, get people into their funnel, build trust over weeks, months, or years, and then when they finally encourage a customer to buy something… sellers experience shopping cart abandonment at the excruciating average rate of 77.13%.

Why?

Because checking out is complicated. Too many clicks. Too much information. Too many shipping options. Too much unfamiliar design. Oh, and my credit card is in the other room.

Do you know where this isn’t a problem?

Amazon.

• Buying time-released Vitamin C takes one click. …

Aún recuerdo la primera vez que vi una foto en Instagram, aproximadamente hace nueve años. Mi amigo Aaron estaba en una banda de rock decentemente exitosa, y me enseñó esta aplicación que recién había instalado. “Básicamente tomas una foto y después usas un filtro para hacerla ver mejor que en la vida real. Es genial para exhibir a la banda.”

Instagram ha recorrido un largo camino desde que Facebook le tuvo miedo a Twitter y compró Instagram por $1,000 millones, pero en cierto modo, es esencialmente la misma cosa: una plataforma para tomar selfies, y presentar una realidad perfecta (y algunos dirían distorsionada). …

While the corporate-sponsored mainline political parties allow extremists on the left and right to whip the masses into a frenzy over highly-divisive wedge issues that have little-to-no effect on widest-spread wellbeing, the five major crises of our time remain forsaken by the political elite, the cultural consciousness, and the international discourse.

It’s up to us to elevate awareness of the five greatest threats to humanity right now:

1. Democratic Destruction

As despots consolidate power and private interests systemically undermine the public good, global democracy remains in decline for the fourteenth consecutive year, with no meaningful reversal on the horizon.

2. Economic Irrelevance

As late-stage corporatists continue to weaponize national and global economic policy against widest-spread wellbeing, workplace automation threatens to skyrocket unemployment in the decade ahead. …

During the 2020 election chaos, a major story flew somewhat under-the-radar in most of the country — Uber and Lyft bought themselves a law.

The two companies, along with DoorDash, Postmates, and Instacart, wanted to pass a ballot measure called Proposition 22, a law designed to classify their drivers as independent contractors and not employees worthy of living wages, paid time off, full benefits, health insurance, pensions, unemployment benefits, and other essential labor rights like collective bargaining.

It was one of the greatest marketing campaigns in American history.

Welcome to the World of Dark Marketing

“Dark marketing and advertising on social media channels is the latest trend in the personalized digital marketing ecosystem and it’s changing the complete online advertising spectrum like no other trend ever did. Dark Marketing and advertising is the combination of highly fragmented, segmented, and extremely personalized retargeting marketing campaigns. Industry leaders, brands, and marketers are currently shifting towards covert strategies and methods to specifically target the young…” — Ankit…

PSYCHOLOGY

There is a global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles in Congress.
The CIA is harvesting adrenochrome from children’s brains.
Hillary Clinton runs a sex dungeon under a pizza parlor.
Time-traveling lizard people rule the world.

And millions of people believe it. Six percent of the voting public may be QAnon supporters. They now have believers in Congress.

How did QAnon, a gathering of isolated people from the fringes of society and online message boards, coalesce into one of the fastest-growing political movements in American history? More importantly, what can QAnon teach us about market psychology and human nature?

Here are just a few…

I was doing wide-grip pullups at the YMCA when suddenly I felt something tear in my upper left torso. I dropped from the bar and immediately headed for the showers, taking it as a sign that I’d pushed myself hard enough for one day.

A few weeks later, I unknowingly experienced hardcore heartburn for the first time in my life. I was at a posh fundraiser for a charity that, perhaps ironically, helped poor people get out of systemic poverty. We sat down to eat and I took a sip of red wine. …

Six Ways to Get Rich

A few years ago, I read a book about how to become a billionaire. The author analyzed the Forbes 400 and discovered that there were essentially only a handful of ways that every single person on the list became extremely wealthy.

The first and most popular way is to inherit money and avoid taxation. Think: the Waltons, the Basses, the Koch brothers, the Barclays. Other ways included conglomerating an industry, monopolizing a technology, exploiting a natural resource or vulnerable population, and engaging in cronyism — manipulating government and the judiciary to extract advantageous personal systemic benefits.

If this list seems sad and depressing, you’re not alone. While ideally most of us would like to live in a compassionate meritocracy where the best and brightest reap the greatest rewards without leaving the masses to languish, the facts are incredibly clear: you have to leverage an advantage and hurt others in order to control extreme wealth. Extreme wealth is simply never merited. …

Today’s my 35th birthday.

It’s been a wild ride: I’ve walked across hot coals, swam up an underground river by candlelight, eaten bull’s testicles, and roasted marshmallows on flowing lava.

I’ve written three books, directed four films, published 400+ articles everywhere from Esquire to The Guardian to TIME Magazine, road-tripped through 45 American states and nine Canadian provinces, helped get some laws changed, and traveled to forty countries including North Korea and the Vatican.

I’ve enjoyed nearly thirteen years of marriage to my seventh-grade sweetheart, and we’ve been blessed to fundraise hundreds of thousands for charity. …