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Advertising. At what point did we as a society decide that it was perfectly acceptable for companies to manipulate us - especially children - into buying shit we don't need and didn't even want until the ad sold us on it? It's fucking wild.
Adblocking feels to me like it should be illegal, but isn’t. I have adblockers on all my devices and haven’t seen an ad for years; it feels like a secret super power and stopped the web from looking like a trashy back alley.
It's weird they don't put more effort into stopping them, TBH. I've heard it's because they'd rather collect extra analytics than do any foolproofing that might interfere with it.
Nah, I pay for my bandwidth, I get to decide what it does and does not get used for. Even if that's not nearly as big a concern as it used to be in like the late 90s, it's the principle of I'm not going to pay for you to shove your garbage down my throat.
And yeah I haven't seen an ad in years and years on PC. People complain about youtube ads and I'm like 'What's that? I watch a lot of youtube and I've not seen an ad in like 10 years.' Sadly on mobile that's a little more complicated, but adding a private dns of 'dns.adguard.com' blocks most things.
Marketing wasn’t really a thing until sometime around the Industrial Revolution and post-WW1. Before then, we didn’t really have the capacity to produce more than what people needed. Marketing basically just consisted of “here’s my product, here’s why it’s superior to others.” But with the post-war boom and the rise in manufacturing, producers were suddenly able to out-produce the demand. So they invented marketing, to get people to buy things that they didn’t actually need. The idea of “create a problem so you can sell the solution” was born.
Yeah I get the history, I'm more commenting on the fact that nobody really said 'Huh, is this a good idea?', it just slowly infiltrated everywhere and like the frog in the pot of slowly-boiling water we don't realize the shit we're in because of it.
That's what I think advertising ought to be. 'This product/service exists. Here's what a panel of independent testers (folks like Consumer Reports) has determined about its functionality, capabilities, etc.' No music, no slogans, no 'vibe-n-style' or whatever, just someone describing the basic facts about the product or service. Because I don't dispute that I have seen ads for something and been like 'holy shit this will make my life easier' or whatever, so I don't want to not be able to discover products.. I just also don't want to be manipulated by the companies that have a financial incentive to push them.
And the fact that a lot of children's TV shows are nothing but thinly veiled toy commercials. Hilariously parodied in Dinosaurs
Worst part is, those are usually the best ones.
Oh yeah, I grew up in the 70s/80s when that shit became rife. I loved Saturday morning cartoons until I got old enough to realize that they only existed to sell me toys (and to sell ads for other toys.)
You can thank Sigmund Freud's nephew Edward Bernays
Specifically his 1928 book Propaganda which basically created PR and modern advertising.
It happened gradually, like frogs in a kettle.
When it was just a guy putting up a sign in front of his smithy it was kind of harmless. Ditto for having a single text-only paper ad for people who are new to town. But, it was a slippery slope.
Frogs will not stay in the kettle :)
Yeah that's kind of my point: society has not stopped to think about the fact that the water is at a full boil and has been for a while. If I had my way ads would just be a basic, boring, 'This product/service exists, and this is what an independent panel of testers has determined about its functions and capabilities.' There have definitely been products that were advertised to me that make my life easier and that I use every day, so I don't want to lose the ability to discover them, I just also don't want these companies putting their dick in my ass and whispering into my ear that I'm not good enough person as a person if I don't like it.
Ordered food at Sonic on their app. After I ordered, it popped up with ads for travel, various credit cards, etc. Completely crazy to me that they're triple dipping on monetization now (sell me food, sell my data and then sell me other shit while trying to sell me food.)
I recently went to Sonic, didn't use the app, and ended up with norovirus for free.
This is why I use my phone as little as I can get away with, because these companies have built their apps as these little walled gardens where it's illegal to modify them to block their ads when that's not the case on a website. Fortunately in my situation there are very few occasions where I have to use my phone or an app for something.