231–240 of 262 posts
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> Is the best solution really to fight propaganda by leaving our information distribution to a selected elite that we have to trust to follow some standards? Compared to leaving our information distribution to anybody who's out to make a quick buck?
That's how food is distributed, basically, in every Western country. So far seems to work pretty well.
As a kid, I grew up in a country with almost no advertising. Repeat after me: No ads in the streets, in the TV, in the radio, nowhere. One day we found a magazine (from another country), which contained ads. Two people smoking cigarettes in a strangely alien world, some kind of jungle - or a safari, maybe. This image was so strange in many ways: Why is it there in a magazine, that was about something completely diffe…
> Image a day in your life without coming across an ad I have had such days. I read a lot of stuff online, and I have adblockers. My entertainment is supplied by books and TV, where I watch either channels like Netflix or recorded shows, where I can skip through commercials. It's not exactly not encountering ads - and I surely encounter billboards when I drive around (though I don't think I can recall any of them, th…
>I've lived in another kind of society - where people spend resources on finding way to get decent food, clothes, books, etc.
How would overt modern advertising have fixed that? Do you think we don't spend resources on having the advertising find us instead of us finding the products? Does advertising even help with finding decent food, are lies forbidden when you advertise?
There's a wide gulf between advertising you have the cheapest apples in town on a sign in front of your store and advertising Red Lobster's Lobsterfest. Capitalism works fine under either example though.
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Advertising is a fact of life, though. Without it, there's no way to inform potential customers of a new brand or product. I mean, imagine if it all disappeared tomorrow. Wouldn't people just stick to the megacorps and established brands they already know? Wouldn't this make it even that much tougher for a Netflix to compete with a Comcast, or an Uber/Lyft to compete with an entrenched taxi industry? How would Dollar…
advertising works in favor of the system/status quo/megacorps. not the little guy. Ads on tv do not show new things. They push brand. brand is mother, brand is father.
Those kind of advertisements are actionable, and the supplier wants to see metrics on how much impact a single advertisement had. In today's era, metrics are much easily found from online advertisement, and so businesses have gravitated to those, and most notably Google search ads.
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Advertising is a fact of life, though. Without it, there's no way to inform potential customers of a new brand or product. I mean, imagine if it all disappeared tomorrow. Wouldn't people just stick to the megacorps and established brands they already know? Wouldn't this make it even that much tougher for a Netflix to compete with a Comcast, or an Uber/Lyft to compete with an entrenched taxi industry? How would Dollar…
It's a matter of push versus pull though. If I know I want a product, I can search for reviews and recommendations, (half of which I assume are astroturfed, but I'm counting those as "ads" which would disappear in this hypothetical.)
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It seems to me like reviews and word-of-mouth can and already do a good job of all this. When I find out about new things, it's generally through social networks. And when I'm looking to buy something new I usually look for reviews. > How will I promote my new movie? Or book? The same way that people do today. Talk shows, trailers (which you let people organically share, rather than paying to put it in front of peopl…
> It seems to me like reviews and word-of-mouth can and already do a good job of all this. They do now, as part of a society that includes advertising. That word of mouth comes as a result of people being aware of things. Reviewers focus on reviewing things people are interested in reading about. All of these benefit from advertising. > Talk shows, trailers (which you let people organically share, rather than paying…
Word of mouth has worked fine long before mass media advertising became a thing.
Is our society and economy dependant on advertising? Absolutely. Has it always been this way, and must it always be this way? Not so much.
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That's how food is distributed, basically, in every Western country. So far seems to work pretty well.
Not so much from the health perspective.
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> Image a day in your life without coming across an ad I have had such days. I read a lot of stuff online, and I have adblockers. My entertainment is supplied by books and TV, where I watch either channels like Netflix or recorded shows, where I can skip through commercials. It's not exactly not encountering ads - and I surely encounter billboards when I drive around (though I don't think I can recall any of them, th…
>(though I don't think I can recall any of them, the mind filters them out by now), Oh no no no. That is not how that works. Coca cola doesn't put up signs, ads, billboards, coaters and napkin holders with their logo on it to get you to stop and think about coca cola. No. What they do it place their logo next to something that seems happy. Next to someone smiling or put it up in situations where people are happy. Rel…
Not really. My mind associates Coca cola with high blood sugar, diabetes and horrible tasting sugar water that would take decades off my life expectancy. Looks like I'm doing something wrong.
> There is no such thing as 'filtering' out ads.
I'm pretty sure there is, based on my own experience.
> They are designed to infiltrate your subconscious.
It's a vacuous claim - by definition, it is impossible to know what is in my "subconscious", so there's no way to disprove whether something "infiltrated" it.
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Or you'll have an American realist Walmart boss telling you to "cheer" up. I see it as unvalued emotional labor, and degrading to those who do it as they are non-negotiably expected to do it. Some people are into this, and some aren't -- but if you are poor and working retail, then you must smile and sometimes sing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOkQJm_UGM4
> Or you'll have an American realist Walmart boss telling you to "cheer" up. I don't think that video exemplifies the American stereotype you think it does: 1. One of the people recording this was singing sarcastically-- purposefully off key, and in a tone that clearly signals to other Americans that he is mocking the thing he is being made to do. He also posted it on Youtube to criticize Walmart. 2. Most of the peop…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKd2unIg5Rk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Njp7ZPeUy2w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk7qF2eXkgQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53AAezi_R8U
The first video isn't in English, and is indicative of reach.
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> Image a day in your life without coming across an ad I have had such days. I read a lot of stuff online, and I have adblockers. My entertainment is supplied by books and TV, where I watch either channels like Netflix or recorded shows, where I can skip through commercials. It's not exactly not encountering ads - and I surely encounter billboards when I drive around (though I don't think I can recall any of them, th…
> That is preferable to the society which underproduces things and where large part of your survival depends on you skill in finding how to satisfy basic needs - food, shelter, etc. I'd rather watch ads than be hungry. And that is perfectly correct. One thing I might add is that capitalism looks much like communism in the long run as companies merge, fuse and become bigger and bigger, because centralisation and contr…
Not sure what you mean here. In the long run, any communist country has ended up either being completely ruined (USSR, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea) or turning back to capitalism (China, Viet Nam, East Europe). Surely capitalism's track record is not that sordid.
> as companies merge, fuse and become bigger and bigger
Companies also break up and whither away.
> because centralisation and control are the key for efficiency
Only for very narrow understanding of efficiency, taken as saving money on very mundane tasks. The same harsh reality of information flows that leads to socialist central planning end up in disaster in the long run applies to the capitalist conglomerates. Unless they are centralized only by name (as it is the case in holding companies, not exercising centralized operational control), they grow rigid, their technologies and business processes grow stale, and eventually they are beaten by young and hungry newcomers to the market.
The only way that they know to resist this process is to enshrine their way of doing business and their position in the market by coopting government regulation and raising entry barriers. That's why they spend so much money on lobbying - it is one of the most profitable investments known to mankind.
> One of the biggest companies on this planet on a mission to get a share of every transaction on this planet.
Not sure what that is about. Which company is that?