81–90 of 253 posts
“Advertisement is the rich asking for more money. They disfigure their towns in order to decorate their houses.” — G.K. Chesterton
In before the "do you also steal from restaurants?"-clowns join the discussion. lmao They're simply the funniest And yes it's the most common "retort" to ad-blocking I always hear.
I think there will be almost no posters here to defend ads, which is really something, given that this is a tech site and a whole lot of the sector is ad-driven. Hopefully this indicates that there will be room for something better soon. Or maybe it just indicates that the ad guys have so throughly beat us that they don’t even feel the need to come argue anymore.
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I find highway billboards and store signage to be a particularly awful display, and I'd be overjoyed for them to be banned entirely. I have often thought about cutting down highway billboards, although I'm not quite intense enough for that.
I've got good news for you! Currently, four states—Vermont, Alaska, Hawaii, and Maine—have prohibited billboards. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard
I pay for what I want to look at, not with my time and attention, but money, the way God intended it.
Advertising based 'free' things cost you far more than a subscription ever would. This is because Advertising Works and it works on you too . You are being manipulated into buying things you wouldn't buy, manipulated into making poor decisions you wouldn't otherwise make. Generations of people lost decades with relatives from smoking and drinking that would not have happened but for advertising. Advertising makes peo…
I occasionally tear down ads in public spaces. I'm sure many will disagree with me, but I do think we should be able to move through public spaces without the incessant assault on one's attention and head space. I haven't been caught yet, though I'm sure I someday will, at which point I'll pay the fine and keep doing it anyway.
I agree with you aesthetically, though if it was a privately-owned, publicly-accessible space, I wouldn't go as far as to commit vandalism, as bad as it may look. (If it was placed by a member of the public without consent of the owner I'd agree with taking it down.) That said, I've been waiting for a good set of widely popular AR glasses to come out so I can write a real-life ad blocker for them.
I wonder how hard it would be to distinguish between various things while driving. Billboards are mostly useless. Traffic signs of course can’t be covered up. Then in between we have cases like signs for gas stations and fast food (which are technically ads I guess but they are actually useful).
Of course this is for version 2.
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You can get pretty close. Turn on do-not-disturb and ignore your mailboxes. Become unreachable. Become ungovernable.
And become irrelevant and uninfluential to the Human Colossus. https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html#part1 The tradeoff to extricating yourself from being influenced without your consent, is that you lose the ability to you yourself influence how society and civilization progresses.
The internet is a medium that facilitates asynchronous communications with like minds. You can leave a comment on a website, or link to your blog post, as a beacon to anyone who's opted into a similar filter bubble. They can find it and contact you. Yes, it will be unsolicited, but not in the same way as a marketing email or billing notice is unsolicited. Nobody is communicating without consent when publishers and readers are participating in a shared community.
If I publish a blog post on my hobby, and someone I've never met emails me about partnering on a project for the hobby, then although it's unsolicited, I would still appreciate the email and follow up. It might take me a while to notice it since I only check my email every few days, but I will almost certainly reply. A personal connection is a welcome respite from a noisy onslaught of automated communications.
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I find highway billboards and store signage to be a particularly awful display, and I'd be overjoyed for them to be banned entirely. I have often thought about cutting down highway billboards, although I'm not quite intense enough for that.
Quite. Also, here in the US, gas stations have begun to play particularly loud/obnoxious video advertisements at the pump. I cannot stress how angry I am about this. One of the last places where I could just day-dream has now been deemed "up for grabs" by the lowest form of shit-peddler in the modern world. Pause for a second to consider the absurdity of being blasted with advertisements while paying for a product. T…
Doesn't help much, but helps a little.
And then stick some unapproved sticker on the pump of your choosing.
Modern economic markets are a decentralized process via which we decide how to best allocate resources. For this to work, we need a mechanism that allows information to be broadcasted through the system to ensure local decisions make sense. (In fact, information asymmetry is one of the main failure modes of modern markets).
So, yeah, advertising sucks, but 1. it's an important part of our market economy and 2. it therefore adds a lot of value to the world.
I actually have a hard time reconciling the reasoning above with how icky, insidious and unpleasant marketing feels when I get subjected to it.