Comment by Night_Thastus
5 hours ago
This is also why I view advertisement, in general, to be an invasive and incredibly dangerous. TV, online or elsewhere. It's all bad. It doesn't just let people know a product exists. It shapes the way we think about ourselves and the world around us. I view it like a cancer that we need to cut out.
Everyone likes to think they're 'immune' to advertisement. That they're somehow mentally above the whole concept and it doesn't affect them at all. Total nonsense.
I know the post mostly already says this, but related, this is also part of the danger of modern social media algorithms. Negative, outrage-inducing topics tend to get more attention in the short run. However, if someone watches it even once, that causes the algorithm to send a more of that kind of content. Before you know it, some people are getting fed and endless stream of the worst possible news, the most depressing takes, over and over. It can aggravate existing mental health issues or give them to people who did not have them before. The algorithm isn't 'designed' to do this, it's just trying to maximize metrics like time spent. It doesn't 'care' if the topics are negative or positive. But they have to be reshaped to consider the damage they can do when you start multiplying that by hundreds of millions of people.
>It doesn't just let people know a product exists. It shapes the way we think about ourselves and the world around us.
I completely agree, and I wish people talked about this more. Even if you ignore all the manipulative messaging of the advertisements themselves the fact that there are now posters everywhere telling you to buy things, do things, be better than everyone else is corrosive in itself. Nobody is paying for an advert that tells you "you are fine the way you are, you don't need to buy anything, you should go for a nice walk in the park, it's free".
I've thought before about how the west basically abandoned religion and instead now we just get preached at by corporations and advertisements instead. Whether you like the idea of Christianity and religion or not, at least the message of Jesus was "everyone is equally loved, don't try and be superior to others, don't cling to material possessions". Now instead of just getting preached to at church we get preached to all day from all angles, and the message is the complete opposite.