The image below is a screen-cap of a "Call to Action" page to promote web-sales via the "STORE" associated with the HOUZZ.com home furnishing/ home decor portal.
HOUZZ was originally established as an open-invitation site to design professionals and design-related retailers (in interior design, home furnishings, architecture, and landscaping) to showcase their design ideas, projects, and achievements on behalf of clients. The projects thus showcased became the source of aspirational "ideabooks" and resource information for all with accounts on the portal.
HOUZZ.com has since morphed into an e-commerce site. This transformation minimized the initial accent to users for finding local talent and resources in order to achieve design goals -- apparently in a reorientation to promote world-wide-web "take your chances" marketing by pay-to-play businesses. This has predictably resulted in shifting the admirable initial focus of the site from novelty, creativity, uniqueness and quality to a common "get what you pay for", "race-to-the-basement pricing", "lowest price", SEO-motivated opportunism.
Browsers of the site can still get introduced to great ideas, but will have to filter-out a lot of up-front promotional gimmickry to truly delve into them.
All of that said (as a preamble): There is a BIG problem with the advertisement above -- apart from the worn-out "75% OFF" lure (see: http://bit.ly/2yiSdUf and http://bit.ly/2y8dTSb ).
Even if it has become standard in our culture to make BIG things out of small things, it is incorrect to suggest that a 7'x9' rug is "OVERSIZE". In fact, 6'x9' is the smallest of what is considered STANDARD ROOM-SIZE" in the trade.
Here is a list of real handmade area-rug "standard" sizes (in feet): 2x3, 3x5, 4x6, 5x7, 6x9, 8x10, 9x12, 10x14, 12x15, 12x18. These are "nominal" standards. Variation of several inches from these standards is not uncommon because of the need to maintain symmetry in border design as a rug is completed. So called "Persian rug sizes" differ somewhat because in Iran (and sometimes by choice in other rug making countries) the metric standard is used.
Since accurate description of items for sale is a key tenet in promoting e-commerce activity, misleading descriptions (intentional or otherwise) invite scrutiny. Consumers of information (and products described by that information) should wonder why a prominent social media site chose to call something "oversize" that is merely average in size (a 7'x9' area rug) .
"THE MEANING OF COMMUNICATION IS THE RESPONSE THAT YOU GET." Consumers have become desensitized to superlatives, and disregard or discount much labelling. Calling the smallest size "LARGE" is part of the conditioning that ultimately keeps expectations small. Sadly, the fruits of such programming are that BIG dreams eventually won't amount to much. Perhaps we are seeing such results already in ways we are only beginning to fathom.
"The Meaning of Communication Is the Response You Get": Propaganda and resulting Mass-Hypnosis by Power-Players Are Reshaping Conventional Understanding about Word Meaning which Facilitates Exploitation of Consumer Needs and Desires."
