Cultural Evaluation of "Mars One Finalist Explains Exactly How it's Ripping off Supporters"

This post will be a cultural analysis of the text I've chosen for the rest of this module, "Mars One Finalist Explains Exactly How it's Ripping off Supporters." I will analyse what it tells us about the culture in context of the subject of Mars One.

Paurian "The Detective" 5/21/2009 via flickr.
Attribution 2.0 Generic License.

1.
The first cultural key word I noticed was in the title: ripping off. This is indicative of the culture we live every day. When things don't live up to our expectations, they aren't just let-downs, they are rip-offs. Don't get me wrong: how Mars One is being described here is pretty much exactly a rip off, but it's noteworthy that the harshness of the title doesn't stand out: it needs to be that strong to get its message across.

The second is "solicits." Although it's really just another word, it carries a kind of negative connotation with it that places it in context of our culture. As a company, it needs to have some public relation on good terms, but since it's trying to pass off as a non-profit, it still needs funds, and rather than ask for them or raise them, it "solicits" them, like it has to be really sneaky and low-key about it. this is as if to suggest that it's got, maybe some shady practices.

2. (3 in the book)
Essentially, this article tries to say that Mars One is a sketchy company, and their goal of sending people to mars within the decade is "dangerously flawed" because of the lack of real standards, and the seemingly focused attention on money generation, rather than astronaut selection and training.

3. (5 in the book)
The key words pointed out in section 1 add to the sketchy, probably untrustworthy image of the program, explicitly with "rip-off," and implicitly with the connotations of "solicitation."

In society, we generally value openness and honesty, and have an extreme aversion to deceit and secrecy. In this article, Mars One is reported to have been acting against those values, and being the especially quick-to-judge beings we are, we get easily riled up in anger far easier than we get interested and do more research.