I heard a friend who had a brilliant theory. The rise of ad profiling from Facebook and Google etc, has bleed into the public consciousness at large and now it's considered normal to categorize people by race, gender, politics, and income etc.
First the companies did, and now we all do.
But of course, a person is more than their race, or gender, or income, etc. Most of the time they have very little in common with those groups aside from color of skin, reproductive organs, or money in the bank.
Maybe I am just brilliant but this has been obvious to me the whole time. Advertisement and the 'need' to market to groups results in reifying those groups in the population. The more the marketing works, the more the groups actually become differentiated, and it creates a positive feedback loop.
This is stupid. The US government has been categorising people by census category for longer than my grandmother has been alive. They even managed to get some buy in on stupid fake categories like AAPI.
First the companies did, and now we all do.
But of course, a person is more than their race, or gender, or income, etc. Most of the time they have very little in common with those groups aside from color of skin, reproductive organs, or money in the bank.
It's just how the advertisers see us.