Comment by yoyohello13
20 days ago
The ad based business model is the most destructive technology of the new millennium. The whole point of advertising, to make people feel unsatisfied with their current life. The current state of the world makes perfect sense when you think of the last 20 years we've been cultivating fear, and dissatisfaction among the populace. All in the hopes of selling 0.1% more widgets.
you thought the business model is any different in the 20th century? I recommend you watch the TV series Mad Men
The tools and information available back in the 60’s are not remotely comparable to the ones available today.
mad men is fiction
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom
Okay read anything about David Ogilvy
Ads are what capitalism runs on. It would be next to impossible for a new business to get off the ground without ads.
I’m not really against ads. I think the problem is in the influencer style business model. People are making a living fighting to get clicks by driving negative emotions. That’s the problem. ‘Influencer’ should not be a legitimate job. There is definitely a way to allow business to advertise without the negative externalities. It just requires regulation, which is basically impossible in the modern political climate.
This whole economy and way of living has turned into people selling themselves in any way possible. Regular folks couldn’t do that in the past but now everyone can mass sell themselves. It’s a sorry state of affairs and I hate influencers as much as the next person but everyone is struggling. I don’t know what the solution is but maybe completely shutting down social media or making it so everything online is deanonymized.
Guess I didn't take the same econ classes, I thought providing value to the customer was what capitalism ran on. I go to the butcher next door without having seen a single ad about it. They just sell a "better" product (according to my own criteria) than the supermarkets around.
If tomorrow (please take a second to imagine) that ads were banned and it worked (effectively 0 ads anywhere) I would still read journals that review new boardgames, I would still need products to fix my bike, etc.
It's value that makes capitalism run, not ads.
Value is cheaper prices. Longevity of goods has fallen to the wayside with most people being in a situation where they can’t think past immediate expenses.
Capitalism is also supposedly the ultimate system for innovation and the best idea is supposedly going to rise to the top based on merit/the marketplace. And let’s not get nitpicky about this: yes putting a sign out front is “advertising.” 99.99% of people are fine with that. But that is clearly not what people are talking about. We are talking about a massive industry that is not about simply getting the word out. It’s way more complex, sophisticated, and hostile than that.
If there were restrictions on advertising that applied to everyone, then everyone would be on the same playing field re: getting the word out. We could argue all day about what the rules should be, but I don’t think anyone could argue against the point that we have clearly gone too far in the wrong direction and need more restrictions currently. We have an ongoing arms race between people using adblockers and Google trying to mass-break them now.
Last I looked in to the numbers I think something like 30% of the US population uses an ad blocker of some sort, that’s how bad it’s gotten. Browsing the Internet without even a basic one is so unbelievably painful and the data they collect/sell has gotten out of control. That’s not “advertising the business,” that’s a second revenue stream unrelated to the core product and done at my expense.