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Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

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Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#471

Post by Fnoord »

ameister14 wrote: post #379
Fnoord wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would have agreed in the past but now that my SO has started an escape room, if your ideal world existed, she would be bankrupt right now. In the old days, if her product -in this case escape room- would be good, she'd get enough customers by word of mouth alone.

What old days are you talking about, exactly? That's a pretty nebulous term. Before advertising? That's a few thousand years ago, so maybe?

When I grew up football (soccer) matches had virtually no advertising. Driving around, virtually no advertising (you gotta be kidding me regarding safety). Magazines had barely any (pages of ads is my last memory). The internet when I joined had barely any. All the free shit existing thanks to advertising is a race to the bottom. Premium brands can sneakily do such too, all in the name of profit; not the customers interest. And it's worse. Clickbait is a byproduct of it because journalism is no longer about observing, research, hear multiple angles which is all too expensive; it is about page views. Which you can observe here in linked items as well as in YouTube videos. How often do you have the phenomenon where you feel you could have summarized it shorter? Where you feel come on, get to the point. Or where you feel deceived after reading the article? All because of page views.

As soon as I got to play with AR (such as Google Glass) the first thing I will look into is filter out the shit I don'tn need.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#472

Post by aantix »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #350
aeternus wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leave it up to the hospital. They are best equipped to assess the cost and likelihood of being able to save the person. They also are most responsible for the repercussions in terms of positive/negative publicity and reputation.

Won't this lead to a situation where some hospitals are known for doing free work, while others aren't? The former will quickly go bankrupt if they aren't subsidized by a charity or religious organization, which has serious drawbacks in itself. As for the rest, the doctors, nurses, and paramedics are now going to be required to do something that's against their training and likely their nature, by letting people die…

Thinking of the parallels with public defense.

Basically, if you're poor, you will get a public defender. Someone who is overworked, underpaid and probably won't give your case the appropriate time it needs to develop a valid defense..

Whereas if you have money, you can afford an attorney that can spend the appropriate time to create a robust defense.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#473

Post by dwaltrip »

It doesn't seem that impossible to implement clear regulations that would significantly mitigate the overwhelming amount of aggressive advertising that we are surrounded by today.

Obviously, it wouldn't be perfect. But we don't need perfection here.

It also seems fairly obvious that there are plenty of alternative ways -- both existing currently and those that could be developed -- for informing people about various products or solutions to problems.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#474

Post by scarface74 »

cameronbrown wrote: post #410
scarface74 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many Linux contributors are paid by companies who make money by advertising?

Seems most of the contributions are from hardware/distro developers. Recent contributions pin Google at making up about 2% and Facebook at 0.8%. I can imagine they're contributing far more value with their Linux Foundation memberships though. [0] https://regmedia.co.uk/2016/08/26/top_30_linux_contributions...

Fair enough. But, that still means that most Linux contributors are not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts and that they are getting paid for it - not volunteering.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#475

Post by scarface74 »

SilasX wrote: post #392
n0mad01 wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

he also said "health ... associated ... should get priced in" - how about 6€ for a can of coke? people would drink it, but far less.

It still has the same problems, in that people can bootleg it. Just at a smaller scale. Remember, they have low-grade turf wars in NYC over cigarette sales due to the really high taxes.

And that also goes to my other point. They have the police another tool to harass people and the police ended up choking a man to death for selling cigarettes illegally that he brought across state lines.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#476

Post by Fnoord »

cameronbrown wrote: post #345
krapp wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Maybe some products inherently can't be sustained by word of mouth, and in a world without widespread commercial advertising they wouldn't exist at all. Maybe those products shouldn't exist, then. Just because someone has an idea or wants to sell yet another iteration on an existing product or service, doesn't mean they deserve to. Maybe advertising allows markets to be far more diverse and saturated than they shoul…

Don't be so reductionist. Someone could find this escape room via a search ad, have a blast and tell all of her friends and none of them may never choose to do the same. And an escape room experience isn't something you can easily bring people back for - you need to find new customers every single time. I suppose a good way that could make word of mouth work is to create two experiences and recommend the other in an…

> independent bloggers

Aka "influencers". Our children are growing up with YouTube idols who don't have integrity. It is even illegal here to focus on children with advertising (which these buggers do).

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#477

Post by bonoboTP »

scarface74 wrote: post #273
karmelapple wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather than banning, how about having an age minimum, something that’s worked fairly well* for alcohol and cigarettes? *depending on your definition of working fairly well

Because a law has worked really well to stop underage drinking, smoking, and weed. It’s the same consequences. Little Johnny with well connected parents and a judge who doesn’t want to ruin the life of someone “who could be his kid” gets off easy while they expel little Jerome who is just “going to turn out to be a thug anyway.”

The good solution - already practiced in many European countries for alcohol and tobacco - is to punish the store if they sell to a minor, not the kid who buys it.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#478

Post by matis140 »

scarface74 wrote: post #248
c3534l wrote: post #193

I wanted to mention that advertising kills the ecosystem for free and cheap stuff. People say things like "TV wouldn't exist without advertising," but TV would probably be better without it since networks would have to convince you to pay them, rather than just stop you from flipping through the channels. Certainly the news would be better because TV news tries to tease the viewer to watch past the commercial break w…

So how do over the air networks convince people to pay for them? Do you want them to encrypt the signals and sell a decryption box? So instead of having information that anyone can access for free, people who can’t afford a monthly subscription should lnt watch tv?

npr is always doing fun drives...they are annoying, but the content used to be worth a donation. they are still around. don't see why it wouldn't work for others. places like HBO already don't have an issue getting people to pay for their content, but are not freely available over the air either.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#479

Post by ajflores1604 »

I'd say silver lining of advertising as it's done today is that the budgets are so high, I know many artists that would not survive without it.

My behance feed is full of artists doing amazing things, being supporded by ad company budgets. GMUNK actually has a great talk on this, I think it's 'pearl 5' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F93CP8UjRxk

There would have to be a fundamental shift in our economic system, not just 'advertising', for artists to be able to have a support system outside of corporate sponsorship and gigs.

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