#2 Persuasion At Its Fullest

Douglas Rushkoff made his audience indulge in his piece, “They Say.” From the first statistic stated in the introduction to the last sentence of the conclusion that summed up the entire idea.  After breaking down the first paragraph I could already almost trust this author with my life. Rushkoff had enough logos in his piece to really make his readers understand that he knew what “persuasion” was all about. The way he used rhetorical questions to keep the audience thinking, was already a persuasion tactic at its best. “Who, exactly, are "they," and why do they say so much? More amazing, why do we listen to them?” The author purposely related to not just a specific crowd of people, but instead to every individual in some way. From the pretty young "sales associate" at the Gap, to authorities or a boss any of us can relate too.

In addition, the author ends up using the other two vital key terms when trying to persuade someone – pathos and ethos. Rushkoff has the authority to talk about this subject from writing books, and emotionally tying in anecdotes and facts to keep the audience reading. For the record, that’s only how you keep someone truly interested and not just flipping through pages to look for pictures or even worse, just putting the book down. It was truly like a timeline in a since, with all the information related from generations to generations. “Best of all, young people were the ones leading the charge. Adults were immigrants to the new realm of interactive media, but kids raised with joysticks in their hands were natives...What media can you use to manipulate a kid when he is already more media literate than you are?” I personally applaud the author for his extra effort to help the readers better understand how they are getting persuaded each and every day.  It keeps others brainstorming and curious from then on. Cause even when you don’t expect it, persuasion is being used daily in some shape or form. But it is your job to willingly give the additional time to look for any sort of persuasion, like Douglas Rushkoff did.