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Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

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Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#231

Post by fsloth »

Modern advertising is propaganda and agitation. While commercial entities have advertised their wares for as long as there have been commerce[0], the modern mass hallucination inducing form became the norm only after the world wars.

The essence of propaganda is to weave a story and engage the target population in an action that creates commitment to the story and creates secondary effect due to social proof as people see other people committing.

This is the essence of modern marketing as well.

Cancer is not really a well thought out way to describe it, it sounds a bit fanatical.

There is nothing conspiracy like about this. This is all well known and researched.

General public is just kept ignorant of it. I don't know why. Maybe it's because the more you know about how propaganda works the less effective it is? Thus teaching people en mass how propaganda works would make even benevolent attempts at mass mind control less effective.

[0] Branding is nothing new. In the viking age particular german swords were very well thought off - and they had particular inscription on the blade. The brand was so strong that blacksmiths around baltic created "pirate" copies of the blades by writing the same inscription - or, as some were illeterate, attempted to copy the markings resulting in almost-but-not quite correct spellings. As their clients were likely illiterate as well I don't think it mattered for business.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#232

Post by luckylion »

blodovnik wrote: post #63
smt88 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What valuable things wouldn't exist without advertising?

Computers. And if you want to be pedantic, you'll say but they would exist for military etc!!!!! But if you're not being pedantic you'll agree that most stuff relating to computing exists in its current form in lockstep with yhe ability of companies to sell and therefore advertise their products. Not just computers but everything related to them too.

"In it's current form" is quite the qualifier. "Hey, computers would probably not look exactly the way they do right now if we had changed something thirty years ago".

I don't know whether there are examples (aside from "the funniest advertisements" shows), but computers certainly aren't one.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#233

Post by [deleted] »

wpietri wrote: post #23

He doesn't quite say it by name, but most advertising is a classic arms race. Especially given how the internet now makes information easily available, a great deal of advertising is about manipulating consumers to pick company A's products over those from competitors B, C, and D. This forces those other companies to spend to get and keep customers. It's pure waste. For example, everybody on the planet is now familia…

[deleted]

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#234

Post by autoexec »

solidsnack9000 wrote: post #3

Maybe some of it...but without any advertising at all it would be really hard to know what products or out there or even that there is a restaurant on the other end of the block.

Yeah, I've been so effective at cutting out ads from my life that I do regularly find that I'm behind on some stuff I'd be interested in and I wish there was a better way to stay on top of things. I try to follow certain blogs and subreddits to help, but it is something I've noticed.

The reality though is that even without ads I'm never lacking for things to spend my money/time on. In fact, without ads my main problem is still more often the finite nature of my time/money than a lack of options.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#235

Post by southerndrift »

cousin_it wrote: post #129
megaman821 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't think they have ever tried that. They stopped ad spend in certain locations and in those locations sales went down. People don't have time to research every single choice in their lives. At some point you just go with brand trust. When I see Uncle Floyd's Cola and CocaCola, I just go with what I know. Advertising establishes brand trust.

Some advertising, like Superbowl ads, does establish brand trust - because you know a fly-by-night company couldn't afford a Superbowl ad. But targeted advertising, which is the whole point of adtech, cannot do that - because you never know if it was shown to a million people or just you.

It works like this but I still don't understand why people trust a company that has the resources to buy a Superbowl ad. If they can afford that ad they must charge their customers more than needed. In other words, the product is more expensive than necessary and the brand isn't offering the best possible value.

The brand is signalling that they have convinced many people, or otherwise, they couldn't afford that ad. So I can trust in the choice of those people. But why should I trust the brand itself?

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#236

Post by lotsofpulp »

gambiting wrote: post #141
solipsism wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May we be allowed cake and ice cream or would you ban those as well? Maybe you can get a special license if it's a birthday?

You need to judge a social impact of something before you ban it. The reason why soft drinks are under fire is because there is a lot of people who drink them literally every day. I know several people who drink 8-12 cans of diet coke every single day. On the other hand people usually don't eat cake or ice-cream everyday. I mean, I have no doubt that you could find someone who does, but it's not a widespread behaviou…

>I know several people who drink 8-12 cans of diet coke every single day.

Are these people not aware of kidney stones and the associated pain?

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#237

Post by jdietrich »

c3534l wrote: post #134
blodovnik wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computers. And if you want to be pedantic, you'll say but they would exist for military etc!!!!! But if you're not being pedantic you'll agree that most stuff relating to computing exists in its current form in lockstep with yhe ability of companies to sell and therefore advertise their products. Not just computers but everything related to them too.

How on Earth did you come to the conclusion that computers wouldn't exist without advertising?

Home computers were initially a novelty item, sold mainly through direct-response advertisements in magazines like Popular Electronics. This early hobbyist market created the economies of scale that made a mass market home computer a possibility.

In the late 70s and early 80s, most people simply had no idea why they would want a computer; The first home computer adverts in the mainstream media didn't really sell the benefits of one computer over another, but sold the idea of the computer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7_j_ABrkn8

Without that kind of advertising, it's entirely plausible to believe that home computers might have been a fad, with the computer resigned to being a specialist tool for business and industry. There's a parallel universe where the home computer and video game boom never happened because nobody told consumers why they might want a computer, the 6502 and Z80 remained niche microprocessors for embedded applications, Woz went back to HP and Bill Gates finished his degree and got a job at Honeywell.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#238

Post by RivieraKid »

I remember thinking years ago that advertising would slowly disappear because we would have tools which would help us make optimal market decisions, so people would just use those and ignore the ads.

Basically, I imagined a website where you pick the type of service or good that you're interested in, fill out some sort of questionnaire and then get a list of recommendations which are optimal for your situation.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#240

Post by luckylion »

cletus wrote: post #214

I really detest the general "hate" of advertising. Don't get me wrong: I'm a zealous ad blocker, largely because advertising can (and does) go over the line of being intrusive. Also I think the dirty secret of ad tech is ad personalization has pretty limited value. But advertising in general is how people find out about things they might need or want. There might be a bakery 2 miles away you'll really enjoy. How will…

> But advertising in general is how people find out about things they might need or want.

That's in the article. He's arguing the exact point that advertising has a legitimate function in a market to inform about products. They've outgrown that, he continues, and now they do not inform, they convince (and often lie to do so).

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