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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: 3, Interesting) by Hyperturtle on Thursday August 01 2019, @04:07PM (2 children)
Dude I feel badly for you. It wouldn't occur to me once to go buy something for a clog. I am too lazy and cheap to do that.
The classic problem of a clogged drain in my home usually involves denying the problem and then only dealing with it when it smells bad, via pouring in boiling water and baking soda topped off by vinegar some time afterwards.
Only after it becomes infeasible to deal with the clog any longer, I get out something like a network cable snake with a fabricated hook on the end and go fish out whatever is lurking deep within the bowels of my plumbing -- often what comes out is like something out of a Cthululian nightmare; moist, hairy, somewhat soapy and slimy and if it was particularly bad, wriggling with unexpected lifeforms that can't be from my world at least. But it would be a rare day I poured anything stronger than lye down a pipe, and only then after I gave up and needed nature to work its course overnight so I could try to deal with the emulsified mess the next day via the same actions I tried the day before...
So, to prevent clogs, first educating people not to flush their problems away is one thing. Nor put everything down the garbage disposal because its convenient. That leaves hair and soap and toothpaste for the most part as regular items that get stuck in sink drains.
I've learned to, at the start of every month (the first weekend) boil water and pour it down each sink drain and the bathtubs, too. Any drain with problems clearing I'll see if I can stab something in there to free it up.
Kids and toys will be a constant problem--even if you screen TV time for ads and crap, their friends will bring ruination and introduce new ideas into the kids heads and thus consume your budget unless you have a steely resolve and an iron will. Pretty much what you just said...
The worst things ever are the ads to pregnant women. OMG go look at some of that; children's advertising is just irritating in comparison. They prey on a woman's fears and can smell it over the wireless cables, I am sure. Few men can protect their wife from the fallout of emotionally targeted advertising like that. (And few men can survive after trying to get a woman to resist it after she's already triggered...in so many cases its easier to agree to buy or just run away and hide, because hell hath no fury like hormonal surges.)
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday August 01 2019, @06:14PM
It's not me as much as the significant other. I have found her attitudes somewhat contagious.
Every so often (like, oh, once a month), she puts on this moody, helpless act in which she can't do a thing for herself, nothing is any good, and it's all my fault. She's far worse than I am about buying solutions to problems. One of the worst things she does is buy more clothes rather than do her laundry. Doesn't want me to do her laundry, because she thinks I can't do it right.
It's hard enough dealing with that without these scumbag marketers doing all they can to make matters worse for us, in order to sell her more crap that we don't need.
(Score: 3, Informative) by tangomargarine on Thursday August 01 2019, @06:30PM
What I came here to say. When I did a 'Net search for how to unclog my kitchen disposal, because I keep pouring Dran-O down my tub and it doesn't tend to help much, the first suggestion was to boil a few pots of water and pour them down the sink. Easiest fix first? Sign me up!
And it worked. It took a fair number of pots over the course of a week, but hey. Sometimes laziness finds the best way to fix a problem :)
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"