Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence

Post by pzs » Wed, May 29, 2019, 6:25 AM UTC

Chathamization wrote: post #334

enlyth wrote: post #15

To me, it is worrying how much human effort we're investing into advertising as a whole. The top minds of our generations, backed by billions of dollars in funding, are working on increasingly manipulative ways to capture people's attention and use it to generate profit. We're constantly getting better at it; who knows what path this will lead us down. I suspect it might not be the one we had wished for.

It seems like a larger and larger percentage of our economy is being taken up by parasitic sectors that have a net negative value for society. Advertising, soda, highly processed food, credit cards, car dealerships, (most) sales people, etc. We'd probably be better of as a society paying these people to do nothing than to do what they do now; we'd be even better off if we paid them to do something actually productive…

Post by countavdhesh » Wed, May 29, 2019, 6:29 AM UTC

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…

Post by InternetUser » Wed, May 29, 2019, 6:49 AM UTC

Chathamization wrote: post #334

enlyth wrote: post #15

To me, it is worrying how much human effort we're investing into advertising as a whole. The top minds of our generations, backed by billions of dollars in funding, are working on increasingly manipulative ways to capture people's attention and use it to generate profit. We're constantly getting better at it; who knows what path this will lead us down. I suspect it might not be the one we had wished for.

It seems like a larger and larger percentage of our economy is being taken up by parasitic sectors that have a net negative value for society. Advertising, soda, highly processed food, credit cards, car dealerships, (most) sales people, etc. We'd probably be better of as a society paying these people to do nothing than to do what they do now; we'd be even better off if we paid them to do something actually productive…

Post by kortilla » Wed, May 29, 2019, 6:55 AM UTC

Chathamization wrote: post #334

enlyth wrote: post #15

To me, it is worrying how much human effort we're investing into advertising as a whole. The top minds of our generations, backed by billions of dollars in funding, are working on increasingly manipulative ways to capture people's attention and use it to generate profit. We're constantly getting better at it; who knows what path this will lead us down. I suspect it might not be the one we had wished for.

It seems like a larger and larger percentage of our economy is being taken up by parasitic sectors that have a net negative value for society. Advertising, soda, highly processed food, credit cards, car dealerships, (most) sales people, etc. We'd probably be better of as a society paying these people to do nothing than to do what they do now; we'd be even better off if we paid them to do something actually productive…

Post by kortilla » Wed, May 29, 2019, 6:57 AM UTC

flukus wrote: post #376

foldingmoney wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like there's some central planning committee that sits down and decides what to pay everyone. Citizens decide where to spend their money -- at least the part that the government doesn't tax and spend for them -- and all of these industries you name exist and pay well because people value them and choose to spend their money on them.

> Citizens decide where to spend their money That's the problem, to a large extent we don't because of the pervasive manipulation the advertising industry does to us, the industries reason for existence is literally undermine our free will.