Advertisements are a scourge upon society, the environment, and ourselves. They are among the worst capitalism has to offer. Why not get rid of them?
If advertisements are the worst of capitalism, that’s high praise for capitalism.
Well, they make the funny lines go up, apparently, so we need them!
They exist because they subsidize other activity. As much as people complain about advertising, people complain about paying for things more.
I’ll pay for stuff if it’s worth it. I buy hardware and utilities. Spotify was interesting at first, but when you realize how much money you’re paying for music over the years, it just doesn’t seem worth it compared to how much money we make over the years.
So that almost makes me not care as much about advertising as I do about unfettered capitalism in general. There should be a wealth tax to discourage things costing so much to maximize profits. Investing is cool as a form of funding growth and innovation, but it squeezes returns and encourages extreme greed and profit. We should all make a little less, and things should cost a LOT less.
When capitalism ducks up, the government is supposed to step in (to help the people). When the government ducks up, Robin Hood is supposed to step in (to help the people). When Robin Hood ducks up, the people must step in with pitchforks and the government must step aside (to help the people).
It’s always been about the people. Government exists for the people, innovation exists for the people, business exists for the people, and even Robin Hood exists for the people. When those all fail, it’s revolution time.
I’ll pay for stuff if I can afford it, and I don’t think most people are against basic economy stuff, either. But when it’s out of control, and people can’t afford or it’s not worth it, and then you make their experience worse and have to resort to psychological manipulation, you’ve already ducked up.
In basically any interpersonal situation, if you have to resort to psychological manipulation, that’s a REALLY bad sign and something is super broken.
Several cities, including Paris and Grenoble in France, São Paulo in Brazil, and Chennai in India have taken concrete steps in this direction. In São Paulo, ads are banned from certain parts of the city, and in Paris, they are prohibited near schools.
Several more cities are following suit, with a growing ad-free movement aiming to make cities a better place to live. ‘Adfree Cities,’ a UK-based nonprofit, is one such example. Cities such as Bristol, Birmingham, and Cardiff are part of its network, attempting to drastically reduce the amount of urban advertising
This is an excellent trend, and one that only lobbyists would fight against.
Since the online advert bubble seems to be bursting, I’m going to take that as a glimmer of hope. And until then, VPN maximus, ads be gone!
I agree. Line-of-sight advertising should be considered a form of pollution (like sound pollution). Plenty of municipalities already tax outdoor advertising to some extent, but the rates are way too low. I can understand why it isn’t usually a priority for city goverments but given how profitable advertising can be I hope more people demand that their local goverments change consider changes. It’s also potentially a bigger revenue source for cities. Either they extract more tax for public services or the billboards come down. Win-win in my opinion.
Agreed - I consider advertising and billboards to be a blight. I’m always pleased to see graffiti go up on some around here because it’s so much more human - one-off pieces that took at least some skill and a bunch of risk to put up.
My SO and I once looked into the cost to rent some local billboards with the idea to just put up local artists work like some kind of outdoor gallery/museum (and deprive all the local politicos and anti-abortion groups the prominent space). It turned out to be cheaper than we expected but not enough to do on a lark - we’d need to set up some kind of organization and fundraise and weren’t in a place to do that at the time so it went on the back burner.
Getting rid of them altogether would be better than paying into the existing system.
I remember a video bit on Cracked about how marketers are perpetually losing the advertising war (since the 1950s, they spend more on advertising for a decreasing effect on consumers. One hypothesis was that as they are drawing adults in with more common, more intense advertising, they’re also indoctrinating the younger generations, who grow up used to everything trying to get their attention for ulterior reasons.
A recent video by Wisecrack also posited this position where in 2023, all media is lousy with product placement and messaging specific to marketing to sponsors, and the viewing audience is learning to be less credulous and more skeptical with every passing year. This might inform how religious ministries are bleeding members, losing attendance and tithes even as they try to hit us with smooth He Gets Us spots on the Superbowl.
We humans are credulous and manipulable, but we also get abused and hurt when they realize their Trump gold is useless, or their rare Funko Pop figurine loses value the instant you open the box, or your religious ministry doesn’t really care about you once you’re no longer able to afford collections. And once bitten, we learn to be twice shy.
How can Liberty Mutual save me money when they buy ads on EVERY fucking Youtube video?
Literally everything that Boomer kids rode out needs to be dismantled or improved.
Advertising predates the 50s by a long shot. Victorian London had adverts.
@NuPNuA @theyresocool ancient Rome had adverts of a kind.
Any organised society will have people who want to inform other people about their product or service, it’s not something we can eliminate, we have to train people to be more resilient to them.
The article discusses this distinction at length. While some advertising does exist to “inform other people about their product or service”, the author argues that most advertising today goes beyond this to sell things that are not needed or even wanted by the consumer before the ads are viewed.
I think the author’s discussion of regulation on public advertising is valid - there are probably ways we can conitnue to allow PSAs or allow ads for non-profits, social services, staple goods, etc while restricting the worst kinds of for-profit advertising that has taken over our cities and media.
IIRC 50’s US imported Nazi propagandists. In any case, it’s gotten way to powerful without benefit to society.
Where do you think Nazi propagandists learned their trade?
Err, Germany ?
Well-researched opinion article. Definitely worth the read.
I loved this, thank you for sharing. I was in this industry when I was young and it was so awful, we basically learned how to brainwash people into buying shit they don’t want or need. Article described it all well. I turned anti-ad for life.
Sadly, most people seem to either enjoy it or not care. I try to do some good as an IT person by teaching about adblockers, but get this: some people want to see ads, yeah I‘m baffled. So it would be a battle to get rid of ads. Neat to hear there is some small progress though.
Agree on getting rid of advertisements, they have this weird dystopian feeling to them and I get the feeling that advertisements are trying to tap into people’s psychological and mental processes to exploit them to gain the company more money
Just being aware of ads trying to exploit your psychology should help curb it a bit alteast in my personal experience but you need to keep reminding yourself so don’t forget, writing this paragraph just now made me think what else have humans forgotten that we need to remind ourselves of to seperate ourselves from the mass collective thought of society
Also the entirety of capitalism is bad, it exists to exploit and exploitation is inherent to capitalism
