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Death to Bullshit

deathtobullshit.com

21–30 of 217 posts

Re: Death to Bullshit

#21
post #8

Can't say how effective this campaign can be, but I'm glad QR codes are now officially included in the list of bullshit. Can't agree more.

I guess I haven't seen enough of them in the wild to get annoyed by them? The use case seems to be to refer someone who sees a poster or other printed work to a URL, and when I've seen QRs used for that it has seemed reasonable. Are you seeing them in some other, less reasonable context?

Re: Death to Bullshit

#23

As much as I dislike some of the current trends (and I do digital media for a living mind you), I do have to point out that this stuff wouldn't be done if it didn't work. Ultimately this implies that there are enough people out there who engage with or...dare I say...want...the bullshit, that their collective voice outweighs those that do not simply by the fact that those are often the users who click ads, share thin…

Simply put, we live in a world of bullshit. People are - by and large - bullshitters, or at least they don't care enough to figure out and implement non-bullshit solutions, because bullshit gets the job done so they can go do other things.

I think one would be better served learning how to coexist with the bullshit than trying to put a stop to it, and I'm usually pretty idealistic. It's just too uphill of a battle to fight millions of years of inertia across our whole species (look at the advertising industry, how huge it is, you think we're going to put a stop to that by simply appealing to people's senses of beauty on the Internet or whatever? And that's just one piece of the bullshit).

Re: Death to Bullshit

#25
post #19

As much as I dislike some of the current trends (and I do digital media for a living mind you), I do have to point out that this stuff wouldn't be done if it didn't work. Ultimately this implies that there are enough people out there who engage with or...dare I say...want...the bullshit, that their collective voice outweighs those that do not simply by the fact that those are often the users who click ads, share thin…

> this stuff wouldn't be done if it didn't work Really? People do do an awful lot of stuff which doesn't work. Is there good evidence that this stuff works?

Advertising? Yes, there is. I'm sure you can find numerous reports on its effectiveness.

Re: Death to Bullshit

#27
post #13

As much as I dislike some of the current trends (and I do digital media for a living mind you), I do have to point out that this stuff wouldn't be done if it didn't work. Ultimately this implies that there are enough people out there who engage with or...dare I say...want...the bullshit, that their collective voice outweighs those that do not simply by the fact that those are often the users who click ads, share thin…

The problem is that bullshit is a negative externality. It's cognitive pollution. Those who clutter the world with bullshit reap the rewards of nabbing the suckers who respond to it, but don't pay the costs of imposing those cognitive loads on everyone else. That leads to more bullshit than would be economically efficient. Take a simple example like billboards. If billboard advertisers had to pay every person whose l…

That's an interesting concept, it makes the cumulative attention span of the people exposed something akin to tragedy of the commons.

Re: Death to Bullshit

#28

As much as I dislike some of the current trends (and I do digital media for a living mind you), I do have to point out that this stuff wouldn't be done if it didn't work. Ultimately this implies that there are enough people out there who engage with or...dare I say...want...the bullshit, that their collective voice outweighs those that do not simply by the fact that those are often the users who click ads, share thin…

Certain types of bullshit (if not all) are built on the phenomenon of Eternal September[1]. There are always those who are clueless enough to trust a spam/scam email or who'd believe that the hamburger on the billboard would be as beautiful in reality. The rest of us who already have the experience and skills for separating the seeds from the fluff, suffer only losses from the bullshit that surrounds us. But the profit made on the few clueless ones keeps the bullshit economy going.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

Re: Death to Bullshit

#29
post #13

As much as I dislike some of the current trends (and I do digital media for a living mind you), I do have to point out that this stuff wouldn't be done if it didn't work. Ultimately this implies that there are enough people out there who engage with or...dare I say...want...the bullshit, that their collective voice outweighs those that do not simply by the fact that those are often the users who click ads, share thin…

The problem is that bullshit is a negative externality. It's cognitive pollution. Those who clutter the world with bullshit reap the rewards of nabbing the suckers who respond to it, but don't pay the costs of imposing those cognitive loads on everyone else. That leads to more bullshit than would be economically efficient. Take a simple example like billboards. If billboard advertisers had to pay every person whose l…

Billboards are pretty helpful. They often tell me I can get food by taking the next exit. Someone might be pulling out their phone while driving instead, because the only alternative is to pull over first. Affecting the equilibrium might have obvious consequences.

Are you sure the prevalence of bullshit isn't healthy? If there weren't so much bullshit, you'd be less immune to it when it matters. Seeing the wrong kind of doctor after being diagnosed with cancer, for example.

Re: Death to Bullshit

#30
post #13

As much as I dislike some of the current trends (and I do digital media for a living mind you), I do have to point out that this stuff wouldn't be done if it didn't work. Ultimately this implies that there are enough people out there who engage with or...dare I say...want...the bullshit, that their collective voice outweighs those that do not simply by the fact that those are often the users who click ads, share thin…

The problem is that bullshit is a negative externality. It's cognitive pollution. Those who clutter the world with bullshit reap the rewards of nabbing the suckers who respond to it, but don't pay the costs of imposing those cognitive loads on everyone else. That leads to more bullshit than would be economically efficient. Take a simple example like billboards. If billboard advertisers had to pay every person whose l…

It's time for a tax on advertisements.
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