Everything that makes advertisers happy is to the detriment of humanity as a whole. Everything that makes advertisers’ jobs easier also makes it easier for authoritarian governments. “Innovation” is no longer about creating new things, it’s about taking what already works, breaking it, shoving ads on it and charging a ransom in the form of a premium subscription.
On the other hand, there are endless ad-skipping tools, pages and sites where the main attraction is the lack of ads without a subscription. More and more people are talking about how intrusive and annoying ads are, even those who make their living from them. As the efforts of big tech to please advertisers grow, so do the efforts of ordinary people to screw them.
Very Cyberpunk.
LOL no, the advertisers won that war decades ago. It’s been an occupation ever since.
Advertising is the reason why privacy is nonexistent now… it is kinda incredible just how much information they gather.
In centuries past when people were writing constitutions and what rights people have they had privacy and warrants and spying and all that shit done based on what evil governments can do to their citizens. I don’t think a single one of them ever realized just how fucking massive corporations would be and how much shit they steal from us.
Say it with me:
“Its Capitalism”
The profit motive is killingbus and the planet.
What Bill Hicks said
I think you mean Capitalism
i don’t know what happened to us as a society… we seem to have lost all semblance of media literacy.
it feels like in the 90’s we were all very ad-aware, and actively opposed the idea of ‘selling out’… then the rolling stones sold the rights to Start Me Up to windows and we’ve been in a race to the bottom ever since. why are we talking about ‘monetizing your hobbies’.
what happened to shows like Media Television, magazines like AdBusters? does nobody remember reading Naomi Klein’s ‘No Logo’??
edit: Remember when Adam Curtis made 'A Century of the Self?
Oh god the “side hustle” hobby culture gets me fuming mad.
Body Post Preview
People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.
You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.
Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.
– Banksy
I feel the same. Besides what you mentioned, there is also the effect on what news and content will be produced and shown (see Manufacturing Consent). The advertisers who are the customers of shows want the viewers in a buying mood. So while “if it bleeds it leads” works fine but controversial topics that disturbs people or make them think will not be shown.
Best example is youtube - once the demonetization came there must have been significant effects on what topics were discussed and how. Without sponsorings and patreon it would be worse, but this or rule is shaping our global civilization for the worse.
People pay far too much attention to ideology, but it’s the rules of a system that lead it to converge to different outcomes. And advertising is a big one.
Advertising exists to manipulate behavior beneficial to clients, out of target groups. It is propaganda and psychological manipulation. The days of simply informing people of products and services is a fairy tale. Maddison Avenue was built off of Nazi Germany’s mass media propaganda strategies.
I loved those old Chevrolet commercials from the 1930s that explained things like how a differential or transmission works in a car and I’m not even a car guy
I only remember the one, but yeah that was an absolute gem
Advertising, marketing, and the stock market are the worst aspects of capitalism, and the system could be improved dramatically with heavy restrictions on all of those. Yeah it would shrink the economy, but the new steady state would be much better. Less waste, better stuff.
The economy doesn’t represent the people, doesn’t feed anyone and doesn’t reflect their well being.
You have my vote.
If I had a magic internet/media button I know what it would be.
It would be a brand banish button. If I see an ad, I wanna just have a button to banish them from all my devices…forever. I already have a rule you poss me off with adverts …I defo won’t buy.
So much tech potential that just does not exist!
YouTube ads were only ever advertising to me on what not to entertain purchasing.
I agree. Everything being advertised on YouTube is sketch. Same with all the repeated podcast adverts honestly.
The fact that youtube hits me with an ad for a game that says everyone thinks its fake, with the most bullshit sounding voice over, tells me they are happy to take money for obvious scam products.
They’re building the internet for AI now, and were building it for advertisers for years before that, what with SEO choking up search results.
What should have been a wonderfully expressive, collaborative, and unifying medium is just being completely ravaged.
I, unfortunately, work in web development.
Advertising as a concept is not bad. But given the realities of capitalism, the greedy executive and shareholders can never resist the easy money. As a result anything that implements ads will eventually be completely overrun and ruined by them. Might take a year, might take 10, but once that door is opened it is inevitable.
At least you are an adult so you have the tools, cognitive and cultural, helping you see the problem. Imagine a very young kid, say 5 years old, watching exciting video content. They do not yet possess such ways to protect themselves from for-profit manipulation.
Just few days ago I finished the IMHO excellent “Buy The Mouse that Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence” by Henry A Giroux and Grace Pollock so you can already understand where I’m going with this.
Yes, advertisers are terrible, they make money by manipulating our thoughts, probing our deepest desire, toying with our emotions in order to sell us whatever is made by whomever pay them the most. But… you and I are fully formed human beings in the sense that we are adults. We spend years navigating through the world, getting scamming, learning how to spot lies and marketing pitches. The problem is, as showcased by Disney in that example (a very important example!), the process is not random. It is a very thoughtful and strategical one, namely how to transform a human being to a consumer from the youngest age.
Anyway I won’t dig into the obvious but the book ends with a couple of practical links e.g. commercial free childhood (what a name, how can how even imagine that would be needed?) which since then became https://fairplayforkids.org/
If you prefer a video on the topic the 2001 yes still relevant 2001 documentary (52 min) “Mickey Mouse Monopoly - Disney, Childhood & Corporate Power” https://films.mediaed.org/Film/Mickey_Mouse_Monopoly/f56fd530-8724-460b-b2bc-6eba9868f0e7
I personally pulled that thread also thanks to the more recent 2016 article “Teaching Disney Critically in the Age of Perpetual Consumption” https://www.jstor.org/stable/45157190 but, again, the point is that it’s systemic.
