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Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence

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Re: Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence

#71

Post by chc »

deogeo wrote: post #38
nullandvoid wrote: post #17

I get that advertising is a necessary evil but I've become numb to accepting any form of advertisements due to it being abused. Ad block + refuse to watch pretty much anything on TV. Life is too short to lose +-10% of my leisure time being brainwashed over a product I don't care about

> necessary evil Whatever convinced you it was necessary? A few cities/states banned billboards, and as far as I'm aware, the sky didn't fall.

How many big content websites do you know that are doing well without ads?

Re: Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence

#72

Post by JohnFen »

cm2012 wrote: post #3

Doubling 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…

> So basically it has a negligible impact on happiness even if this analysis is true.

Not to those 3%, and since advertising provides very little benefit to anyone who isn't in the ad business, I would be happy to that 3%.

Re: Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence

#73

Post by jressey »

WalterBright wrote: post #50
jressey wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would go further and state that our entire economy and society are based on the manufacturing of demand. There are so few things we actually need. Food, water, clothing, shelter. Everything else is a luxury you've been convinced to buy (or it was given to you by someone who was convinced). I'm not talking about ethics here, just straight facts.

Prison provides food, water, clothing and shelter. We send people there to punish them.

You will notice 'being locked in cages' is not in my original list.

Re: Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence

#74

Post by vertline3 »

There is a documentary from BBC about the history of philosophy of happiness that was on YouTube, in the documentary it is mentioned that the Greek Philosphers had discussed advertising as lowering our happiness in order to replace the hole with their product. I think it was epicurus but I am not certain. the narrator is Alain de Botton

Re: Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence

#75

Post by cm2012 »

sesteel wrote: post #66

I 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 gam…

The biggest driver of people wanting more is peer actions or non ad entertainment (people with fancy things in movies).

Re: Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence

#76

Post by hristov »

There is a very underrated old movie called Roger Dodger, where the main character is an advertising executive. He said something to the effect that his job was to convince people that their lives were shit. Only after you convince them that their lives are shit you can then convince them that the new product is the very thing they need to fix their lives.

Re: Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence

#77

Post by blacksmith_tb »

WalterBright wrote: post #50
jressey wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would go further and state that our entire economy and society are based on the manufacturing of demand. There are so few things we actually need. Food, water, clothing, shelter. Everything else is a luxury you've been convinced to buy (or it was given to you by someone who was convinced). I'm not talking about ethics here, just straight facts.

Prison provides food, water, clothing and shelter. We send people there to punish them.

Or to put that differently, we provide those essentials to prisoners because they'd die without them?

Re: Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence

#78

Post by elorant »

lordnacho wrote: post #24
jandrese wrote: post #4

Isn'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…

And then there is a third kind which says hey dude we know you bought a pair of Timberlands last year so here are offers from their new line-up.

The web has enabled unprecedented levels of intrusion for advertisers.

Re: Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence

#79

Post by wk_end »

rwc wrote: post #30
lordnacho wrote: post #24

Earlier 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.

Some historians of advertising - probably most famously, Adam Curtis in "The Century of the Self" - argue that "type 2" directly fell out of World War-era propaganda research redirected towards consumerism.

Re: Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence

#80

Post by cm2012 »

JohnFen wrote: post #72
cm2012 wrote: post #3

Doubling 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…

> So basically it has a negligible impact on happiness even if this analysis is true. Not to those 3%, and since advertising provides very little benefit to anyone who isn't in the ad business, I would be happy to that 3%.

I don't think that correlation is accurate. But even if it is, there is a trade-off: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20034507
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