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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

#441

Post by anewhnaccount2 »

HNLurker2 wrote: post #356
deepakkarki wrote: post #346

Folks in this thread may find this interesting, a 4 part documentary on Edward Bernays and the history of advertising and PR as we know it today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04 From the video description - "The story of the relationship between Sigmund Freud and his American nephew, Edward Bernays. Bernays invented the public relations profession in the 1920s and was the first person to take Freud's idea…

Fun fact: Bernays grandson is the co founder of Netflix. And you may think what brainwashing are all of these memes by Netflix? (Stephen Bernays Randolph his father)

Wow. And I suppose they managed to eroticise Netflix itself via "Netflix and chill". Pretty brazen stuff when you think about it.

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

#442

Post by coldtea »

analog31 wrote: post #364
deepakkarki wrote: post #346

Folks in this thread may find this interesting, a 4 part documentary on Edward Bernays and the history of advertising and PR as we know it today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04 From the video description - "The story of the relationship between Sigmund Freud and his American nephew, Edward Bernays. Bernays invented the public relations profession in the 1920s and was the first person to take Freud's idea…

>>> He showed American corporations how they could make people want things they didn't need by systematically linking mass-produced goods to their unconscious desires. I sometimes wonder if the people who are the true targets of advertising, made to want things they don't need, are the people who buy advertising.

Those people can also do A/B tests, and compare various methods of advertising. And they get their money's worth on customers (e.g. a promotional vlog by an a-lister can suddenly push millions worth of product). So probably not.

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

#443

Post by coldtea »

slavaukraini wrote: post #432
deepakkarki wrote: post #346

Folks in this thread may find this interesting, a 4 part documentary on Edward Bernays and the history of advertising and PR as we know it today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04 From the video description - "The story of the relationship between Sigmund Freud and his American nephew, Edward Bernays. Bernays invented the public relations profession in the 1920s and was the first person to take Freud's idea…

Wow it's crazy to think the world wasn't always like this... and I guess it's even crazier that you can't really imagine a world without adverts using things like celebrity endorsements. It's insane how much effect seemingly minor things can have on society.

Well, a constant barrage of promotional messages, playing with people's feelings, taking advantage of psychology, hurting their self-worth to hook them (buy these clothes to be like those beautiful people, fat? you need this product, buy this gadget and enter the lifestyle of the persons using it in the ad), embedded covertly in TV, movies, celebrities and openly in tv, billboards, print, webpages, video games, mobile apps, flyers, posters, and so on, is not exactly "minor".

We see hundreds of ads every day. Even if we miss each particular product placement, their aggregated core message "buy more stuff" and "your life is not perfect like the people in the ads" registers just fine.

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

#444

Post by XorNot »

chrisseaton wrote: post #409
Chathamization wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is such a hugely snobby attitude. The value of soda for example is that some people like the taste and sensation. It brings them a little bit of joy. Not everything has to be coldly utilitarian.

There was a scientist who's work was to find the optimum amount of sugar to put in soda - the "bliss point" that would get people to keep drinking it without getting fed up with the sweetness - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliss_point_(food)

You aren't making any decisions when you enjoy soda: a large corporation paid some people to conduct studies and ensure that you can't not enjoy it on a basal level.

Of course it's not bliss - it's not good for you in anyway. In fact we know - completely - that it has massive long term deleterious effects on your overall happiness - because it's not optimized to actually "make you happy" - it's optimized to keep you drinking it.

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

#445

Post by jimktrains2 »

dwaltrip wrote: post #359
jimktrains2 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The light side is of so little value that I think we should just throw it out with the bathwater and kill this modern experiment in advertising. I don't think that's true at all. Where else would you learn about new services or products? Here are some examples from a 2010 model railroader. https://photos.app.goo.gl/RvRzECgs7MaTo7tP8 Some, especially the Kato model Amtrak one, have some aspects of an aspirational ad…

Humans learned about new things for thousands of years without the modern of advertisements. I have no fear that the news of useful and interesting products will spread just fine even if advertising is massively reduced.

Let me rephrase your response.

> Humans learned about new things for thousands of years without the modern of technology.

> I have no fear that the news of useful and interesting information will spread just fine even if technology is massively reduced.

Sure, we don't need ads the same way we don't need computers. I however like being able to learn about things outside my physical filter bubble and immensely enjoy my used tools and electronics (along with the massive coat savings) I've bought from ads on Craigslist.

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

#446

Post by hi41 »

Our economy is dependent on advertising so that revenue increases every quarter. Any curtailing of advertising would also have a impact on revenue and then result in job loses. We need to arrive at solutions that is able to reduce such impact on individuals and families.

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

#447

Post by tjpnz »

ngold wrote: post #182
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.

And then the math geniuses that could be the next Einstein are slaving away in cubicles writing algorithms for the stock market. So much potential lost in the pursuit of increasing someone else's wallet.

I would extend that to those working in tech.

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

#448

Post by ionised »

chrisseaton wrote: post #429
ionised wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or people enjoy soda because the of insane amount of sugar put in it by people intending to make the product as addictive as possible. Remove the sugar from soda and you have awful-tasting water. Sugary drinks are no better than cigarettes, and the people pushing them know exactly what they are doing and what they are exploiting.

You can make anything sound absurd by reducing it to its ingredients like that. And anyway, value is determined by the buyer. You can't say as an individual that something has no value to society.

> And anyway, value is determined by the buyer.

I disagree. You can make anything seem valuable by defining value in the most cynically narrow terms possible like that.

By that same logic, heroin has great value in society, and hitmen and we shouldn't be trying to stop these things. However we do, because the popularity of the product is no measure of its contribution to society.

Continue on with that logic and literally everything is valuable, making it a meaningless distinction.

> You can't say as an individual that something has no value to society.

I can and did. It's an opinion not an assertion.

If you are creating a need that didn't already exist, like targeting people's predisposition to addictions to substances like sugar, or nicotine, or heroin, then I posit that you have created no real value whatsoever.

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

#449

Post by raxxorrax »

HNLurker2 wrote: post #356
deepakkarki wrote: post #346

Folks in this thread may find this interesting, a 4 part documentary on Edward Bernays and the history of advertising and PR as we know it today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04 From the video description - "The story of the relationship between Sigmund Freud and his American nephew, Edward Bernays. Bernays invented the public relations profession in the 1920s and was the first person to take Freud's idea…

Fun fact: Bernays grandson is the co founder of Netflix. And you may think what brainwashing are all of these memes by Netflix? (Stephen Bernays Randolph his father)

Netflix content mostly feels empty and shallow, so it seems to not be working correctly. Or maybe they were aiming for this cheap TV ambiance.

Or it is working perfectly, since I have a subscription (for now).

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

#450

Post by chrisseaton »

ionised wrote: post #448
chrisseaton wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can make anything sound absurd by reducing it to its ingredients like that. And anyway, value is determined by the buyer. You can't say as an individual that something has no value to society.

> And anyway, value is determined by the buyer. I disagree. You can make anything seem valuable by defining value in the most cynically narrow terms possible like that. By that same logic, heroin has great value in society, and hitmen and we shouldn't be trying to stop these things. However we do, because the popularity of the product is no measure of its contribution to society. Continue on with that logic and liter…

By your logic music and art have no value to society, because there was no need for those until they were invented, someone could assess their value as zero, they consume natural resources which harms all of us, and the people could be doing something more productive (by some unstated metric of yours) instead.

You just don't enjoy soda. There's nothing wrong with other people enjoying it. Either in moderation, or irresponsibly in our opinion, which is their own business. Other people don't enjoy music and art and should probably think they should be done away with you like you with soda.

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