MARKETING IN THE WILD

In another view of the LOST attic of fan theories, this was a new one on me. This one was created around the first-second season:

Fan Theory: Charles Widmore is using the island to test out psychic marketing. Widmore and the Others are both separately trying to make use of the facilities left behind by the Dharma Initiative for their own ends. And Widmore wants to use the arcane Dharma science to create a new form of "direct marketing" — beaming product marketing directly into your consciousness. And the Oceanic 815 castaways didn't crash on the island, they landed there and were fooled into thinking they crashed. It's possible that Widmore brought the castaways to the island to use them as "test subjects for Widmore product/market research testing." In any case, Jack and the other castaways will discover in the second season finale that they didn't really crash, when they find a landing strip hidden on the other side of the island.

This theory tries to explain away two major issues with many early fans. First, that the passengers on the plane would not have survived a plane crash at cruising altitude. In this theory, there was no plane crash; it was a mental deception. Second, it attempts to explain why and how Widmore became so powerful on the mainland and so obsessed with the island's "powers."

There is plenty of evidence to support a mental-psychic-human experimentation theory to the show. It does help lessen the confusion about Jacob and the tangents like time travel (it did not happen because it was programmed to confuse the subjects). It puts a person like Jacob not as immortal god, but the head of research and development. He recruited test subjects to run grand mental experiments like Widmore's own son did with lab rats at Oxford. Daniel claimed to have found a means of time travel, but it is more likely he had a nervous breakdown knowing that his mental training techniques were being used by Widmore to manipulate a person's free will.

What the Others would have wanted with the Dharma technology would be similar: cult mind control.  If Jacob was not working for Widmore, he would have been a Jimmy Jones cult leader. Or, perhaps, both because the Others were actually earlier "test subjects" whose minds had such adverse reactions to the experiments they could no longer be returned to normal society on the mainland.

The theory was correct in predicting that there would be an unknown airstrip on the island. The theory is at odds with any product or marketing research analysis to the test subjects. If the focus was on creating habits or product preferences, the island environment did not allow for product recognition or choices. In fact, only a few of the castaways actually were subjected to the intense Dharma manipulative behavior exercises at a station: Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Carl, Walt and Desmond. The general "fear" of island dangers, such as the manipulative story of "the disease" and the terror of the smoke monster, were probably more control mechanisms to keep the subjects herded at the beach camp.

The idea that the castaways were subject to mental punishment and mind control dangers can be a good story line, but for what purpose? If Widmore was the man behind the curtain, what was he trying to get out of ruining other people's lives. He may have just been a meglomaniac himself, and torture was his amusement. It could be the ruins of a failed "re-education" process for the military to deal with anything from post-traumatic stress disorder to training cold blood assassins. But Widmore already allegedly had all the money in the world, why would being able to control purchase habits of nations make him any better off (richer, yes; a market manipulator of all goods, yes)? A military-industrial use of mental corruption seems to be a richer avenue of study than targeting preferences over brands of paper towels.