A widely used form of persuasive advertising is modeled on a practice identified in "Operation Margarine" by Roland Barthes53, in which the advertiser raises objections to the product at the outset, then answers the objections with the message intended to be assimilated and repeated. There are three reasons this is so effective, the first is that even if the marketer's message does not pass rational muster, this type of framing makes it more likely people will accept the message without reflection. Second, if the marketer had not raised and then answered the objections, people would more likely encounter the objections later and would be without a clear way to navigate past them, which leads to the third reason: the marketer has already framed the conceptual space of any future debate due to biased reaction toward the end goal of the marketer. Hopefully the practices we'll be outlining in this section will help you first develop your awareness of, and then secondly craft your reactions to these techniques. Finally, we'll help you use these techniques yourself.
Experimenting with the way in which a concept is transmitted becomes contextualized rather quickly. For example, it is problematic discerning between non-linguistic behavior that transmits a meme, and a non-verbal signifying action that is part of culture. Imagine encountering a hand-shaking meme bearer for the first time--an individual walks up, greets you verbally, and then extends their right hand. Should you instinctively mimic the motion and they clasp and shake your hand, the meme has been effectively transmitted, even if you had never been exposed to previous hand-shakers. What is understood as a signifier within a culture is interpreted as a non-linguistic behavior by those outside the culture until they've been indoctrinated, or, in this case, bequeathed the technical language of "handshakes" that now grants a meaning to a specific motion. Of course, for memes to survive and spread there must be communication and a way for the meme to trigger the host organism's motivational systems. For linguistic memes, emotional appeals are likely the best method for transmission. For non-linguistic or behavioral memes a relation to pleasure and/or pain would be most effective.