We Volunteered to be the Crop
The Interesting History of ‘People Farming’ in America.
16 min readMar 18, 2020
“If you aren’t paying for the product, you are the product.”
Paying for customers.
This is a quote about television advertising from the 1970s. The earliest known reference is shown in this YouTube video. It was circulated in various forms, but the one nearest to this one was tweeted in 2010 by publisher Tim O’Reilly.
It is about the subtle brainwashing that has been known to be very profitable for companies selling food, beverages, cars, clothes … in fact, just about anything that is sold. People sell products and services. Businesses sell information. Nations sell sovereignty. Governments, it turns out, sell mostly people.