> Easterlin (1974) found early evidence suggesting that society does not become happier as it grows richer.
This is why equality is important. A society becoming less equal is a problem, even if everyone gets richer.
Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence
61–70 of 537 posts
Re: Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well like it says there's two kinds. One is "Hey, did you know this thing exists? Check it out! Here are all the tests it passed, realistic cost of ownership, and locations where it is in stock". The other is "Look at this woman, isn't she fascinating? People like her will desire you more if you buy the thing she's lying on top of. Actual woman not included." Unfortunately, people have discovered type 2 is effective…
> One is "Hey, did you know this thing exists? Check it out! Here are all the tests it passed, realistic cost of ownership, and locations where it is in stock". I almost never see ads of type one - in fact, even finding that information is usually made accidentally or deliberately difficult.
I see ads like 'Now: The new X with the features Y and Z' all the time.
Re: Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence
#63Isn't this what you would expect? Advertising fundamentally is trying to convince you that you need something. If you're perfectly happy with your current situation then what else would you need? So the advertising has to convince you that you're not happy but that there is a product that you can buy that will increase your happiness. You're basically being negged by advertisers.
Well like it says there's two kinds. One is "Hey, did you know this thing exists? Check it out! Here are all the tests it passed, realistic cost of ownership, and locations where it is in stock". The other is "Look at this woman, isn't she fascinating? People like her will desire you more if you buy the thing she's lying on top of. Actual woman not included." Unfortunately, people have discovered type 2 is effective…
"We" had a chance to re-set this at the dawn of Internet Indexing and Search and discovery Optimization, but Overture (and then Google and later FB and TWTTR, at al) and "us" enabled and encouraged advertising to become the driving force of the internet. We could have had a different ad-free internet, but no one was willing to pay that bill.
Re: Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence
#64The biggest offender in my opinion is not the web, where you can install ad blockers and avoid certain websites, but television, where you're forced to sit through something before you can get to the content you're trying to watch. I find it especially offensive on paid services like Hulu. I'm paying for the thing, just let me watch it! It's also pretty bad for F2P mobile games, although the solution there is easy (p…
> The biggest offender in my opinion is not the web, where you can install ad blockers and avoid certain websites, but television
Yes, I agree with this. I gave up on television about 20 years ago, and it was the ads that pushed me that way. Every so often I'll see a TV program, and it's still intolerable -- things are so much worse than they were 20 years ago.
Re: Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well like it says there's two kinds. One is "Hey, did you know this thing exists? Check it out! Here are all the tests it passed, realistic cost of ownership, and locations where it is in stock". The other is "Look at this woman, isn't she fascinating? People like her will desire you more if you buy the thing she's lying on top of. Actual woman not included." Unfortunately, people have discovered type 2 is effective…
> One is "Hey, did you know this thing exists? Check it out! Here are all the tests it passed, realistic cost of ownership, and locations where it is in stock". I almost never see ads of type one - in fact, even finding that information is usually made accidentally or deliberately difficult.
Google's text ads, which are nothing but "hey this thing exists", are the ads I see most often.
Re: Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence
#66I view advertising as a form of pollution. In many cases, it erodes the human experience. It is abusive to families with children creating strife where there was none. I spend a lot of time managing expectations and sharing philosophical ideas, like "less is more". I don't mind teaching my children, but I don't like feeling people are trying to take advantage of us all the time. I explain it to them as if it is a game we're all playing, "if you keep your money you don't have to work forever." Another fun game I'd like to suggest is looking at an index fund calculator and see how much money you'd have if somebody had invested 1K (or $50 a month) in your name on your birthday. I use this as a means of giving them a plan; nobody had ever done it with me growing up, hopefully my kids are clued in on how to earn financial freedom. Now, I just hope my advice withstands the test of time.
Re: Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well like it says there's two kinds. One is "Hey, did you know this thing exists? Check it out! Here are all the tests it passed, realistic cost of ownership, and locations where it is in stock". The other is "Look at this woman, isn't she fascinating? People like her will desire you more if you buy the thing she's lying on top of. Actual woman not included." Unfortunately, people have discovered type 2 is effective…
But can you point to a time in human history where type 2 wasn't the predominant form of advertising? This is not some modern discovery or exploit.
actually, subjectively I get the feeling looking back at older ads post-industrial revolution that the weight has shifted, and that the abundance of it (such that almost all advertising is psychological/social manipulation rather than presentation of facts) is some modern phenomenon.
Previously the idea that you would struggle to know what specific product an ad is selling, where to buy it, what it costs, and what it's features are would seem obscene, but these days concepts of brand, desire, status, aspiration, are so omnipresent that deriving any pertinent details is now a common experience.
Pre that, it probably is all the same, because modern advertising is, fundamentally, just propaganda rebranded by ad men.
Re: Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence
#68Though without advertising don't we have less jobs and seamingly greater dissatisfaction with lack of income?
It seems like it's the gospel of capitalism (or neo-liberalism?) that has fooled of us that we need more money to be more happy.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-...
As a loner, one night I was sitting with friends, talking and laughing and I thought "I'm really happy right now! So this is what I've been missing, a social circle!". There are also many articles written about how having a good group of friends improves your health so much as you grow older.
Admiteddly we were sitting in a restaurant, where the food and drink cost money.
Re: Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence
#69Doubling of advertising expidenture (Which is a massive, sea change) would apparently make people 3% less happy. So basically it has a negligible impact on happiness even if this analysis is true. I highly doubt it is true though. It's a purely correlational study, that says from 1980-2011, advertising increased and people in general got 3% less happy. They say they accounted for GDP when doing their regression, but…
Happiness is the one thing we should be optimizing for. 3% is not negligible if there is no trade-off.
Again, I don't think the correlation holds in the first place. But if it did, there absolutely is a trade-off. It's more or less impossible to grow any endeavor beyond local scale without ads, unless you're lucky enough to be an industry with a strong viral or press component. Take a look at the S-1s of most companies that go public. 9/10 of the companies have been able to grow because of ads.
Re: Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well like it says there's two kinds. One is "Hey, did you know this thing exists? Check it out! Here are all the tests it passed, realistic cost of ownership, and locations where it is in stock". The other is "Look at this woman, isn't she fascinating? People like her will desire you more if you buy the thing she's lying on top of. Actual woman not included." Unfortunately, people have discovered type 2 is effective…
> One is "Hey, did you know this thing exists? Check it out! Here are all the tests it passed, realistic cost of ownership, and locations where it is in stock". I almost never see ads of type one - in fact, even finding that information is usually made accidentally or deliberately difficult.
I am, thankfully, pretty distant from things advertising these days, but one of the few things that stuck, and one of the first bits of advice is to move away from the factual type 1, to the vague aspirational type 2 on the grounds it works far better. I seem to remember one popular book picking on example type 1 ads from a newspaper or yellow pages and turning the boring lists of features into the hollow promises^W implications of type 2.
Which is essentially admitting it's very good manipulation so close to lying it should carry a warning or regulation.
It's the former type that's sometimes quite popular - like in the back of old computer or hobby magazines - precisely because it's handy for discovering new things.
TL;DR Type 2 is what marketers and advertisers do, type 1 is what a lawyer, gardener or software engineer might produce to sell their product.