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Death to Bullshit

deathtobullshit.com

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61–70 of 217 posts

Re: Death to Bullshit

#61

Post by fredkbloggs »

shostack wrote: post #10

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…

> 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.

Are we sure of that? It might depend on our definition of "work". A lot of the people responsible for doing this stuff may just be doing it because if they admit that none of it works, they'll have nothing else to offer and will be out of a job. It's not terribly hard to make up data showing some kind of effectiveness, or just to misinterpret real data in a way that can convince others to let you keep doing it. For every marketing or advertising craftsman out there who builds something that works, gathers useful data, and interprets that data honestly, there are probably 20 people who have no clue and just keep churning out the same stuff because they don't have anything else to offer. Whether it's profitable, or profitable enough to be worth doing, is anyone's guess. Given how cheap impressions are, especially the kind of ultra-low-value impressions that bullshit provides, it's pretty difficult to imagine this stuff paying for itself, even if most of it is autogenerated or written by the world's most desperate English-speakers.

It might help more to come up with other jobs for the people who are putting the bullshit out there. Jobs they can do well, ideally. As it stands, I'm not sure the bullshit is serving their employers as much as it's just something for them to do so they keep getting a paycheck.

Re: Death to Bullshit

#62

Post by a3n »

On the flight/product plus insurance pattern, if it's difficult to cancel the insurance, I wonder what the effect of cancelling the entire product purchase would have on this problem. Just cut to the chase, pull back all your money, leaving a nice, obvious "fuck you" in the resulting vacuum. That is, assuming they haven't inserted the same bullshit cancellation for the purchase itself.

Re: Death to Bullshit

#64

Post by russell »

Another piece of bullshit that I am running into with alarming frequency when I click on search results that leads to a local newspaper like the Des Moines Register is that it pops up with a request for a subscription. If I cancel the request, the story appears but with the text replaced by white rectangles. That's just rude. I'm from out of town, for god's sake, I just want to read one story. The New York Times or the San Jose Mercury are more respectful. They give you 10 stories a month.

Re: Death to Bullshit

#65

Post by a3n »

resu_nimda wrote: post #23
shostack wrote: post #10

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…

Except the call to arms is two pronged: call out bullshit, but also don't create bullshit. Don't do it is always achievable, even if it might take some time to extricate yourself from a situation that demands it, and still take care of your family.

Re: Death to Bullshit

#66

Post by nileshtrivedi »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #29
rayiner wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As healthy as prevalence of air pollution, I guess.

Re: Death to Bullshit

#67

Post by segphault »

I couldn't help but notice that the blog associated with the site (linked at the bottom of the manifesto) is hosted on Tumblr and runs all of its offsite links through Tumblr redirects so that the clicks are all tracked. Surely that qualifies as exactly the sort of bullshit that this person is inveighing against.

Re: Death to Bullshit

#69

Post by nileshtrivedi »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #55
remarkEon wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

-> Billboards are pretty helpful. They often tell me I can get food by taking the next exit. Usually I find the state-made info signs on the sides of freeways more informative than the advertisement billboards because it displays everything I need in one quick glance. The tiles of each "food" or gas or whatever option partitioned left or right, denoting which way I need to turn after the exit. That's just me, though.…

It's not like it's 2 alternatives of content we're talking about, one legitimate and one not. I think it's more that there's legitimate content that's constantly getting interference from this extraneous and meaningless noise. It's important to remember that such abstractions enable you to reject the content you don't personally see as meritorious as unwholesome. And that's a sure way to fool oneself. Rewind the cloc…

> Why is it there if no one finds it helpful?

OP had a good answer: Negative externality.

Re: Death to Bullshit

#70

Post by davemel37 »

Animats wrote: post #60

Advertising in the US doesn't create demand. It just moves it around. America is spent out. The US personal savings rate is under 5%. Everything else gets spent, and the saved money gets spent later. There's no "pent-up demand" waiting to be unlocked by advertising. Advertising is thus a net lose for Americans. All that effort adds to cost. For some products, including movies, long distance phone service, and many pr…

>neither Amazon nor walmart advertises much...

What? Amazon is googles largest advertiser and walmart outspends target almost 2:1 ...

http://adage.com/article/digital/amazon-tops-list-google-s-2...

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