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Advertising is a cancer on society
I know it's a blog post, but you're not going to get this kind of thing in a news article. Hopefully SoylentNews' many advertisers won't be offended.
[...] Advertising as currently practiced shares these characteristics. It's a malignant mutation of an idea that efficient markets need a way to connect goods and services with people wanting to buy them. Limited to honestly informing people about what's available on the market, it can serve a crucial function in enabling trade. In the real world however, it's moved way past that role.
Real world advertising is not about informing, it's about convincing. Over time, it became increasingly manipulative and dishonest. It also became more effective. In the process, it grew to consume a significant amount of resources of every company on the planet. It infected every communication medium in existence, both digital and analog. It shapes every product and service you touch, and it affects your interactions with everyone who isn't your close friend or family member. Through all that, it actively destroys trust in people and institutions alike, and corrupts the decision-making process in any market transaction. It became a legitimized form of industrial-scale psychological abuse, and there's no way you can resist its impact.
The growth of advertising is fueled by the enormous waste it creates. In any somewhat saturated market - which, today, is most of them - any effort you spent on advertising serves primarily to counteract the combined advertising efforts of your competitors. The same results could be achieved if every market player limited themselves to just informing customers about their goods and services. This, unfortunately, is impossible for humanity, and so we end up with a zero-sum game instead (or really negative-sum, if you count the externalities). If you have competitors, you can't not participate.
The blog/article goes on to describe Robocalls, telemarketing, Spam, Leaflets, snail mail spam, SEO, and much, much more, all for the same low price! (Now how much would you pay?)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday August 01 2019, @09:24AM (3 children)
We have some fairly good truth in advertising laws over here in Eastpondia, but they don't go far enough.
Stuff I'd like to see legislated:
- If you are going to use a word like "more" or "less" in your advertising (for example, "more flavour!", "Less calories!") then you should HAVE to specify exactly what it is "more" or "less" than.
- People in adverts should only be allowed to dress like doctors, chemists, dentists etc if they actually are.
- Any celebrity endorsements should presented alongside text that clearly informs the viewer / reader exactly how much the celebrity received in compensation for selling out.
- Meaningless feel-good words like "luxury", "premium", "natural" should be given definitions, and advertisers made to stick to them. As new words are invented to circumvent this, define them too.
- Do something about the word "Diet". For example "Diet Pepsi". Really? You think if you swill that shit you're going to lose weight? Please.
- Weasel words like "could be" and "linked to" need to fuck off. I got sick of all those shitty Nestle cereal ads telling how "eating whole grains COULD BE good for your heart. Correlation =/= causation, so legislate it.
- Inventing bullshit molecules for the sake of shampoo. Just fuck off already, like it isn't just the exact same sodium laureth sulfate + perfume they use in the supermarket brand.
- Retractions. Fines as a deterrent are OK, but if a newspaper prints something inaccurate, they can be made to print a correction. There should be a system whereby a company can be forced to spend advertising money "correcting" any claims that were found to breach the rules. You might be watching an ad break on TV when suddenly an "unadvertisement" pops up, telling you that red bull doesn't actually "give you wings", it gives you ADHD and a migraine.
Most importantly, add a module to every school curriculum on how to recognise and counter these bullshit attempts at mental manipulation. Show kids these tricks, how they work, what they are trying to do. Teach them how statistics work and how they can be manipulated.
THAT would be a good start.
(Score: 1) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Thursday August 01 2019, @11:58AM
Yes, free speech does not mean freedom to plaster bullshit everywhere.
There has to be a systemic societal function for upvoting things that are healthy and social for society and de-amplifying those things that are degenerate and asocial.
Right now this function is reversed and this is to the benefit of the worst people in every possible way.
I like adbuster's black circle campaign also, pass that on please.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 01 2019, @04:51PM
I'd like to add that the retraction must match the scope and audience of the inaccurate ad. Your ad was lying during the Superbowl? Your retraction MUST hit the same audience, even though it's a lot of different ads across many different networks, days, and sporting events to do so. The big problem I have with retractions is that "X is guilty of crime! ..allegedly.." happens front-page mostly in 65 pt font and "X has been cleared of the allegations" happens in 8 pt font in the least read area.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday August 01 2019, @05:03PM
Agreed. "Natural" is particularly pernicious in the U.S. I have several relatives and close friends who seem happy to pay double or more for some product stamped "natural" when it has no legal definition. Along with this, we need laws to stop misleading legal terms that don't mean what common people think. In the U.S., a chicken that is labeled "natural, cage-free, free-range, humanely raised, antibiotic-free, no growth-promoting antibiotics, raised without hormones" is basically 100% BS.
"Natural" is a meaningless term with no legal definition.
"Cage-free" just means chickens aren't in cages. They can still be stuffed in a ridiculously overcrowded henhouse in horrific conditions.
"Free-range" just means chickens have outdoor "access" with a minimum square footage of outdoor area. "Access" could mean a tiny door at the end of the horrifically crowded henhouse that the farmers sincerely hope no chickens ever go out of, and which leads to a vacant dirt area, not a green field where chickens are happily hopping about.
"Humanely raised" has no legal definition. Anyone can claim it.
"Antibiotic-free" is required for all meat sold in the U.S., so this is not a useful statement on a package... putting it there implies that there's something exceptional about the chicken in the package, when it's just abiding by the law. (Note this is different from "raised without antibiotics" -- a more useful label -- since antibiotics can be used to treat disease, but producers must allow sufficient time for the animal to be "clear" of antibiotics in its system before selling it, so all meat should be "antibiotic-free.")
"No growth-promoting antibiotics" is again something legally required, even though some poultry producers list it anyway.
"Raised without hormones" is again a legal requirement for poultry, so it's meaningless on a label.
Some of these terms have close synonyms that ARE legally meaningful. I brought up "raised without antibiotics." In some case, third-party certification agencies are coming up with terminology to combat the crap of the U.S. government's legal terms. For example, "pasture raised" when certified by some third-party agencies means chickens are actually pretty much what most people think "free-range, cage-free" chickens should be.
Again, I have many relatively smart relatives who are taken in by the BS, though. They proudly bring home a package labeled with these BS terms after being suckered out of three times as much money for effectively the same cheap product they could have had without the labels, and they think they're giving their kids and family better options. It's deplorable. One shouldn't have to go to the grocery store with a dictionary of legal terminology to be able to know what you are buying.