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Advertising is devastating to my well-being

briancarper.net

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Re: Advertising is devastating to my well-being

#11

Post by michael_dorfman »

kunley wrote: post #3
michael_dorfman wrote: post #2

Wow, an entire blog post dedicated to a straw man argument. The opening sentences of the linked article: There's an interesting article on Ars Technica about how blocking ads is somehow unethical, and "devastating to the sites you love". The idea that I have a moral obligation to stare at an advertisment, the thought I have an ethical obligation to voluntarily annoy myself for the sake of a company's profits... it wo…

Whether OP's response was emotional or not, it touches the matter. Note it's very easy to look for fallacies when you are detached from the subject. The question is if the person doing this wants to make the world a better place in his way or is just a policeman for the sake of verbal purity..

It touches a matter, but not the matter of the article he thinks he is arguing against.

The OP is against advertising, on two grounds: 1) that he doesn't want to be exposed to things against his will, and 2) that business is by its very nature unethical.

You're right when you say that these are emotional arguments, and not logical ones.

The fact that the OP "wants to make the world a better place in his way" isn't comforting to me; as Shaw pointed out, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

My point isn't one of "verbal purity"; rather, I'm just trying to take the words seriously enough to follow through their implications.

(I assume, by the way, that the OP would be upset to find that his post was linked to on HN, because that link could be viewed as a form of advertising for the piece, and we know how he feels about advertising....)

Re: Advertising is devastating to my well-being

#12

Post by ekidd »

alexandros wrote: post #7

In a twist that the author certainly did not intend to happen, his description of books as an ad-free medium led me to think of a model where out of copyright books are printed with in-page ads and distributed for free. Would that work? :)

Once upon a time, ads in books were extremely common. However, writers hated this, and many of them forcefully opposed the practice during contract negotiations.

One publishing house made the mistake of violating a contract provision against ads by putting a cigarette ad in one of Harlan Ellison's books. Harlan responded in his own inimitable way, as described in the "DID HARLAN REALLY MAIL A DEAD GOPHER TO AN EDITOR?" section of http://harlanellison.com/text/newsfaq.txt .

Re: Advertising is devastating to my well-being

#13

Post by kunley »

michael_dorfman wrote: post #11
kunley wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether OP's response was emotional or not, it touches the matter. Note it's very easy to look for fallacies when you are detached from the subject. The question is if the person doing this wants to make the world a better place in his way or is just a policeman for the sake of verbal purity..

It touches a matter, but not the matter of the article he thinks he is arguing against. The OP is against advertising, on two grounds: 1) that he doesn't want to be exposed to things against his will, and 2) that business is by its very nature unethical. You're right when you say that these are emotional arguments, and not logical ones. The fact that the OP "wants to make the world a better place in his way" isn't co…

> It touches a matter, but not the matter of the article he thinks he is arguing against.

So what? He still can have some good points, which you seem to refuse to consider as he "broke" your rule of being strictly consistent.

Btw, with your last sentence you clearly put yourself on a side of a policeman..

[edit] I forgot to mention that this 'good intention' vs 'policeman' was about you not the OP. You falsely assumed that I want to attribute everything right to the OP and everything wrong to you, making another fallacy btw. Not at all. I hoped you with your comments want to make it all better and not just be a nazi here.

Please also don't underestimate the power of motivation. I personally find Shaw's famous cite intellectually witty but not wise. Motivation is a primary source of what we do.

Re: Advertising is devastating to my well-being

#14

Post by skorgu »

michael_dorfman wrote: post #11
kunley wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether OP's response was emotional or not, it touches the matter. Note it's very easy to look for fallacies when you are detached from the subject. The question is if the person doing this wants to make the world a better place in his way or is just a policeman for the sake of verbal purity..

It touches a matter, but not the matter of the article he thinks he is arguing against. The OP is against advertising, on two grounds: 1) that he doesn't want to be exposed to things against his will, and 2) that business is by its very nature unethical. You're right when you say that these are emotional arguments, and not logical ones. The fact that the OP "wants to make the world a better place in his way" isn't co…

> (I assume, by the way, that the OP would be upset to find that his post was linked to on HN, because that link could be viewed as a form of advertising for the piece, and we know how he feels about advertising....)

I'm not in love with the OP's piece myself but I think this is being unfair to it. There's at least a quantitative if not a qualitative difference between informally posting a link in a forum designed for it and the sort of weaponized mass psychology modern day advertising has (d)evolved into.

The piece is wooly and rambling and not a particularly coherent argument, please don't sink to its level when criticizing it.

Re: Advertising is devastating to my well-being

#15

Post by ErrantX »

This simply rehashes and old and badly made argument from months ago...

I mean, the Ars article was a bit "out there" but he clearly hasn't really read it (e.g. The idea that I have a moral obligation to stare at an advertisment, the thought I have an ethical obligation to voluntarily annoy myself for the sake of a company's profits... it would be hilarious if it wasn't so repugnant.)

Re: Advertising is devastating to my well-being

#16

Post by Goladus »

davidw wrote: post #5

Hrm. Not voting this one up. His suggestion (don't know if it's facetious or not) of requiring a 'contract' is obviously a non-starter. Any site that tried that would lose visitors to non-contract sites, and since most people don't block ads, the contract site would simply be losing revenue. > I run my own website(s) at a loss specifically because I'd rather pay out of my own pocket than force people to look at ads.…

I don't think he intended the suggestion of requiring a contract to be a "starter." Although he'd love internet content providers to take a realistic assessment of what their content is really worth (My favorite movie critic put ads on his site a few years ago and I read it much less frequently now, even with adblock) what he reasonably expects is for companies to stop whining about adblock.

Re: Advertising is devastating to my well-being

#17

Post by thingie »

Tichy wrote: post #9
alexandros wrote: post #7

In a twist that the author certainly did not intend to happen, his description of books as an ad-free medium led me to think of a model where out of copyright books are printed with in-page ads and distributed for free. Would that work? :)

I've actually seen books with ads before, it is not a new concept. Those were rather old books, too (pre-internet). Only very few ads, though, maybe three pages in the whole book. I like your idea with the out of print books!

Filling covers of the books with ads is very common (I can find them in many books printed in the last 100 years, mostly textbooks, technical manuals and paperbacks, of course), but I haven't seen ads anywhere else, yet.

Re: Advertising is devastating to my well-being

#18

Post by davidw »

Goladus wrote: post #16
davidw wrote: post #5

Hrm. Not voting this one up. His suggestion (don't know if it's facetious or not) of requiring a 'contract' is obviously a non-starter. Any site that tried that would lose visitors to non-contract sites, and since most people don't block ads, the contract site would simply be losing revenue. > I run my own website(s) at a loss specifically because I'd rather pay out of my own pocket than force people to look at ads.…

I don't think he intended the suggestion of requiring a contract to be a "starter." Although he'd love internet content providers to take a realistic assessment of what their content is really worth (My favorite movie critic put ads on his site a few years ago and I read it much less frequently now, even with adblock) what he reasonably expects is for companies to stop whining about adblock.

I'm not too worked up about adblock - the people who use it likely dont' click anyway. However, were the internet to move to an equilibrium with adblock as the norm because of massive adoption, it would cause serious problems for many content providers.

Re: Advertising is devastating to my well-being

#19

Post by RyanMcGreal »

>(By contrast, books (for example) are awesome. I pay for a book, and then I read the book start-to-finish with no ads, no distractions. A few pages at the back maybe, but I can ignore those. Books are nice.)

This reminded me of a line from Neil Postman's book Amusing Ourselves to Death:

>Imagine what you would think of me, and this book, if I were to pause here...and then proceed to write a few words in behalf of United Airlines or the Chase Manhattan Bank. You would rightly think that I had no respect for you.

Re: Advertising is devastating to my well-being

#20

Post by tomjen3 »

davidw wrote: post #5

Hrm. Not voting this one up. His suggestion (don't know if it's facetious or not) of requiring a 'contract' is obviously a non-starter. Any site that tried that would lose visitors to non-contract sites, and since most people don't block ads, the contract site would simply be losing revenue. > I run my own website(s) at a loss specifically because I'd rather pay out of my own pocket than force people to look at ads.…

Hmm, what you want isn't so much for people to see your ads as to capture their purchasing intent.

In your case you are going to have too kind of people comming there:

1* people who are in love with a "small" language, and want to see it grow. 2* people who are loking for a language to learn.

The people who fit in the first group are likely to be very good programmers, so you could have a set of premium job ads there.

The second set of people are in need of tutorials or books about how to program in that language; they would be good candidates to refer to some Amazon books.

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