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Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

jacek.zlydach.pl

631–640 of 657 posts

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't exist to be happy, you exist to survive Speak for yourself. You exist to survive apparently, and what a meager and sad existence that seems to me. Good thing there's no authority telling us why we exist and we're each free to decide for ourselves. What would we have accomplished as humans if... What would we have accomplished if we survive until eternity without being happy? The world does not have infinite…

> Good thing there's no authority telling us why we exist and we're each free to decide for ourselves. You aren't. Everything you do, even doing nothing, has consequences that are beyond your control. Even worse, your actions have consequences not just for you but for others, even people who don't yet exist. We only exist today because generation after generation of the people that came before us have worked together…

Doing what we are here to do. Life exists because the universe had latent potential that unthinking matter could not release. The whole universe is working to exhaust its potential. Intelligent life is just another step in that process.

Haha... yeah ok. I know better than to try to convince religious people that their irrational views are baseless. It never gets anywhere. But you snuck by my guard because your religion is somewhat non-traditional.

Let's go our separate ways, you believe whatever you want :)

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#632
post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if your ideal world existed, she would be bankrupt right now [citation needed] You're making a couple of mistakes here. One is imagining that in a world without ads, her experience would be the same as her not advertising. The other is that something that is bad for a given business is something that's bad for society. Both of these are at best unproven. > Most ads isn't about manipulation For every ad you see toda…

> [citation needed] I can't really give financial, but believe me, after having to spend 30k$ more because of some problems, we only had about 6k$ to pay for 5k$ a month of expense. After a year, in a location surrounded by restaurants (more than a dozen), with quite a bit of event closeby, with quite a bit of people going around, the amount of people that found out about us outside of ads, is barely a handful. After…

I don't have a dog in this hunt, but perhaps one problem is assuming that people know what an escape room is?

I certainly don't, and if that's all it said on the door as I was walking to a restaurant, I certainly would not stop in.

Maybe the benefit of online advertising is simply making people who know what it is aware that there is one in their zip code. (Option awareness for the primed is a thing.)

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#633
post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if your ideal world existed, she would be bankrupt right now [citation needed] You're making a couple of mistakes here. One is imagining that in a world without ads, her experience would be the same as her not advertising. The other is that something that is bad for a given business is something that's bad for society. Both of these are at best unproven. > Most ads isn't about manipulation For every ad you see toda…

> [citation needed] I can't really give financial, but believe me, after having to spend 30k$ more because of some problems, we only had about 6k$ to pay for 5k$ a month of expense. After a year, in a location surrounded by restaurants (more than a dozen), with quite a bit of event closeby, with quite a bit of people going around, the amount of people that found out about us outside of ads, is barely a handful. After…

The world would certainly be a worse place without escape rooms existing too :|

Many people seem unwilling to admit what they do is bullshit. Not judging that at all, virtually most jobs are bullshit, I've done far more useless things for big companies earning good money too. Yeah it offers entertainment value but were it to disappear humanity would not suffer for it.

I'm honestly amazed at the number of people who truly believe what they do offers value, long lasting, real value to society. Have quite a few friends in advertising/marketing and they've drunk the kool-aid thinking that because they bring in X amount for bigcorp their existence is justified and if they didn't someone else would. Without this delusion it's likely not an easy thing to live with.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#634
post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [citation needed] I can't really give financial, but believe me, after having to spend 30k$ more because of some problems, we only had about 6k$ to pay for 5k$ a month of expense. After a year, in a location surrounded by restaurants (more than a dozen), with quite a bit of event closeby, with quite a bit of people going around, the amount of people that found out about us outside of ads, is barely a handful. After…

The world would certainly be a worse place without escape rooms existing too :| Many people seem unwilling to admit what they do is bullshit. Not judging that at all, virtually most jobs are bullshit, I've done far more useless things for big companies earning good money too. Yeah it offers entertainment value but were it to disappear humanity would not suffer for it. I'm honestly amazed at the number of people who t…

Do you know how to tell whether a transaction is beneficial to both parties? It’s mutually voluntary. Some third party thinking it’s bullshit is just meaningless noise.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#635
post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought about being explicit: I am not questioning your work or your worthiness or your satisfaction with life. But nobody knows if different circumstances would have led to a life more valuable to society . I am surprised you don't think there was anything better you could have done in your life, but to each their own.

It's like saying maybe with the light off you could have done better navigating through theses rooms. Free learning experiences was available pretty early in my life because of ad suported content. Maybe I could have done better in something else, who knows, what I do know is more learning experience is ALWAYS better.

You are repeating one logical fallacy: the fact that you perused ad-supported "free" content does not mean that there wouldn't be non-ad-supported "free" content without the internet turning into an advertising mess.

I've grew up on the free Internet resources without ads (banner ads just came to be). I've read free books on highly technical topics, on Mathematics...

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#636
post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [citation needed] I can't really give financial, but believe me, after having to spend 30k$ more because of some problems, we only had about 6k$ to pay for 5k$ a month of expense. After a year, in a location surrounded by restaurants (more than a dozen), with quite a bit of event closeby, with quite a bit of people going around, the amount of people that found out about us outside of ads, is barely a handful. After…

The world would certainly be a worse place without escape rooms existing too :| Many people seem unwilling to admit what they do is bullshit. Not judging that at all, virtually most jobs are bullshit, I've done far more useless things for big companies earning good money too. Yeah it offers entertainment value but were it to disappear humanity would not suffer for it. I'm honestly amazed at the number of people who t…

> Yeah it offers entertainment value but were it to disappear humanity would not suffer for it.

You underestimate quite a bit the value of entertainment, but that's your right.

In my case, it was a single example for which I have information about and can talk about. The same will apply to anything which is niche. You can't constantly search for things that fix your problem, even if you know exactly what is required to fix it, and you can't be aware of everything that could fix your problem. Ads are the only ways for theses niches problem to be fixed.

If you think you can do it more efficiently than ads, go for it, you'll be amazingly rich.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#637
post #632
post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [citation needed] I can't really give financial, but believe me, after having to spend 30k$ more because of some problems, we only had about 6k$ to pay for 5k$ a month of expense. After a year, in a location surrounded by restaurants (more than a dozen), with quite a bit of event closeby, with quite a bit of people going around, the amount of people that found out about us outside of ads, is barely a handful. After…

I don't have a dog in this hunt, but perhaps one problem is assuming that people know what an escape room is? I certainly don't, and if that's all it said on the door as I was walking to a restaurant, I certainly would not stop in. Maybe the benefit of online advertising is simply making people who know what it is aware that there is one in their zip code. (Option awareness for the primed is a thing.)

> I don't have a dog in this hunt, but perhaps one problem is assuming that people know what an escape room is?

Oh yeah definitely, that's something that we will need to do in our city because the concept is too new. We just don't have too much time and money to invest in that. We were going to do that recently in a festival, but we learned too late that it wasn't going to happen in an adjacent park ^^' like it always did in the past.

> Maybe the benefit of online advertising is simply making people who know what it is aware that there is one in their zip code.

Yeah that what ads does in our case. We hope that word of mouth will help show more people it's fun.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#638
post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like saying maybe with the light off you could have done better navigating through theses rooms. Free learning experiences was available pretty early in my life because of ad suported content. Maybe I could have done better in something else, who knows, what I do know is more learning experience is ALWAYS better.

You are repeating one logical fallacy: the fact that you perused ad-supported "free" content does not mean that there wouldn't be non-ad-supported "free" content without the internet turning into an advertising mess. I've grew up on the free Internet resources without ads (banner ads just came to be). I've read free books on highly technical topics, on Mathematics...

> there wouldn't be non-ad-supported "free" content

I'm not arguing that at all. I was pretty specific saying that the one that provided my learning experience couldn't have done it full time.

There wouldn't be as many learning opportunities. I also consider that I can't expect others to do work for me for free, that's just wrong.

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#639
post #637
post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a dog in this hunt, but perhaps one problem is assuming that people know what an escape room is? I certainly don't, and if that's all it said on the door as I was walking to a restaurant, I certainly would not stop in. Maybe the benefit of online advertising is simply making people who know what it is aware that there is one in their zip code. (Option awareness for the primed is a thing.)

> I don't have a dog in this hunt, but perhaps one problem is assuming that people know what an escape room is? Oh yeah definitely, that's something that we will need to do in our city because the concept is too new. We just don't have too much time and money to invest in that. We were going to do that recently in a festival, but we learned too late that it wasn't going to happen in an adjacent park ^^' like it alway…

Thanks.

I guess also embedded in my comment was a question: what is an escape room business?

It appears to be a game?

How long does it take?

How much does it cost per encounter?

Can one do it with friends (like lazer-tag) or is it a single-person encounter?

How much space does the facility require to process how many customers per hour?

Re: Advertising Is a Cancer on Society

#640
post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would pay for the search and to watch videos We are sadly a tiny minority. I keep seeing people talking against Youtube Premium. > There should at least be an option to pay for ad-free, tracking-free, service. Agree completely, but the existence of ads isn't what stops that sadly.

The existence of ads definitely stops that. People were happy to pay for newspapers for decades before they appeared for free on the internet. They are still happy to pay for news that isn't available for free, as Bloomberg, the WSJ, etc show. It's only when there are "free" alternatives that people flock in droves to the "free" options.

> It's only when there are "free" alternatives that people flock in droves to the "free" options.

People were happy to pay 10$ for something until there was the same thing for 5$ and theses peoples thus flock to the "5$" options. This is why we should stop the 5$ option because it hurt the 10$ one!

People that paid more, just did because they had no alternative to get that. In that amount, there was some that couldn't pay that and didn't, and maybe you don't know them, but they exist. The cheaper option still provide enough value, or else why would the one that paid more move to the cheaper one? It also allowed the one that couldn't afford the previous price, to afford it and get that value too.

It's even possible that it was in aggregate delivering more value in total when the people that wanted the 5$ options were paying 10$ for the one with more things in it, but is it ethically right to force them to pay 5$ more for something they don't care about? Isn't it one of the important point here in this discussion manipulating people to pay for something they didn't want?

> The existence of ads definitely stops that.

It thus doesn't stop that, it only show that people were forced to pay more for value they didn't care for.

The people that want more and can afford it are still there. Like you said, they are still happily paying for Bloomberg and WSJ.

Talking about that, I don't read theses newspaper, yet they are annoying me enough that I may pay for it one day just because I keep getting linked to their article on Hacker News. It's weird how the paying one is giving me worse experience than ads ever did in my case, but I still believe that option is needed.

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