Comment by 🚀 stack
Re: "Is hating online advertising weird? I asked my son (25)…"
Old folks are very used to it from TV. Last half hour on SNL is pretty much all ads. I was hoping young people would outright reject it, but... ah well.
Mar 01 · 2 months ago
32 Later Comments ↓
I'm not sure if you could declare all advertising as evil. It's overwhelming how much we're bombarded by ads, and I think the advertising industry is overall gross sure but like. So much of how we interact with the world is basically subsidized by advertising.
Example - the phone book. We'd get it for free and it would list businesses who paid to be in there and it was so useful. Trying to find a bookstore? Grab the yellow pages and look up bookstores. A pretty useful tool subsidized by advertising.
I do think it's sleazy how ad agencies are always trying to find new, weird ways to run ads and hook into our lives. Could probably benefit from more regulation. But declaring it all as evil?
🚀 lars_the_bear [OP] · Mar 01 at 19:01:
@stack : I don't know if I qualify as "old folks", but there was only one ad-funded channel on broadcast TV until I was about thirty, as I recall. The BBC channels still don't carry advertising but, of course, they're now colossally outnumbered.
I kinda miss the phone book. Although at the end it got out of hand an I was getting a new one from a different phone company every month, straight into recycling
🐦 JustASillyBird · Mar 01 at 19:56:
I have to put up with youtube ads at work, where there is no blocker. They are annoying. And... so low standard.
A lot of them are for blatent scams. The heater the energy companies don't want you to know about, that will heat your home for pennies. Get-rich-quick courses that will show you how to set up a dropshipping operation and make thousands every month in your spare time, or give you access to a secret AI stock-trading bot. The robotic dog that is so realistic you can't tell it isn't real, that everyone has to get their children for Christmas. Quick, buy it now while stocks last!
Youtube thinks I am an overweight diabetic Black lady, based on rhe ads I am getting.
If you're using YouTube for work purposes - hassle your employer for YouTube premium. Seems like it would make you more productive and be a pretty justifiable business expense.
🍵 tacomanator · Mar 01 at 22:27:
@lars_the_bear point taken. I would just add that you would only hate the ads more if you thought there was an alternative.I think you have to have "vision" for what could be "a better world." Put in the oposite sense, it's like how we're happy with our salary until finding out our neighbor's is higher.
also just kind of interesting to think about what things in our lives are subsidized by advertising, and what would it look like, how much would it cost, etc if they weren't.
Like getting a newspaper without ads - would it be more expensive?
How would radio and television in the US have evolved? They've pretty much always existed through advertising. The early days of cable television didn't have ads but save for a few premium networks that's long gone.
How many people would use YouTube if you had to pay? And how much would it cost? would it exist?
Just things I'm thinking about based on the earlier "all advertising is evil" comment. What would things look like without any ads?
And old ads from the 70's and the 80's are very amusing now.
taking the idea even further - how would the entire entertainment industry work?
Would we consider a theater putting up posters of what shows are playing to be evil advertisements that shouldn't exist? How would anybody know that a particular performance even exists without an ad for it existing somewhere?
Even a plain-text listing of what's playing would be an ad wouldn't it?
I always thought the Internet would bring on the age of curation. A friend (who is no longer on this plane) had an impeccable music taste, and an amazing ability to the find obscure stuff. I always hoped that people would be willing to pay for his newsletter or whatever. Sadly never happened.
It is surprisingly hard to find what you need because all sources of information are corrupt.
🍵 tacomanator · Mar 02 at 01:00:
@jprjr Precisely. Any black-and-white discussion on advertising as good or evil is missing the mark. Society would surely be held back if it were limited to word of mouth alone. Yet at what point does it become too much? I go back to my point on product and price. I don't mind paying in attention, but IMO the price is too high and the value too low for most mass media. That line is different for everyone.
I have to apologize to all... My company was responsible for what is generally considered to be the first banner ad on the web.
🚀 lars_the_bear [OP] · Mar 02 at 08:43:
I don't think I object to advertising in itself. In a capitalist economy, at least, I don't see how it can be avoided. I'm not saying that ads on YouTube or websites are immoral, only that I, personally, find they stop me watching.
I guess I'm not alone in this but, conceivably, this is a place where you're more likely to find people who are ad-averse. I remain somewhat confused about how the rest of the world sees this.
on your guys's's's' cue youtube decieed to ad attack me and for the first time in ma life I saw the "ad-blocker not allowed on youtube" screen. you tellin me youtube felt me ad-block so hard it went out of its way to make an ad-block-blocker? hell yeah, imma installeded FreeTube rn, it go br
i (late 20s) also can't use the internet without an ad-blocker, but radio has many ads and yet there it doesn't bother me. i think the big difference is how focused i am trying to read or watch something interesting and fighting interruptions versus listening passively. i didn't grow up with tv, but it has ads like radio and they might not bother me if i were watching passively or multitasking, and the same goes for youtube.
the lack adblocker popularity baffles me too. it isn't just about getting youtube premium, it's almost everything on the mainstream internet.
this website is fun: https://how-i-experience-web-today.com/
👻 a-short-term-effect · Mar 02 at 13:47:
Lots of young people use adblockers, your son seems to be an exception.
🚀 lars_the_bear [OP] · Mar 02 at 14:28:
For completeness, I'll point out that I don't think my kids _like_ ads, or are even neutral about them. They certainly don't watch them. Rather, I think they see ads as just another unavoidable, nasty part of life, like paying taxes and dentistry.
It always amazes me to see what other people's screens look like -- all the flashing and moving Harry Potter stuff... The first thing I do is install something like LibreWolf or Waterfox with uBlock origin and Privacy Badger and maybe Ghostery. Then Tor browser for non-banking tasks.
👻 darkghost · Mar 02 at 16:16:
I guess my perspective re ad subsidizing things: in the early days of cable there were no ads. Then you still had to pay for cable and watch ads. This was a violation of the social contract. One tolerated ads over broadcast TV/radio because it was free. In the early days of streaming there were no ads. Hulu had a free tier with ads. This is long gone. Now you are again paying for ads.
YouTube monetizes my watch habits. That should be the end of the deal but instead it is yet more ads, now targeted.
An audio streaming service has a holiday play list. I heard one song and after 10 minutes of ads I switched it off for good.
It's gone over into flagrant cash grab.
Company founders with no ideas on how to create a sustainable business from their web product enshittify their user experience, cram ads and tracking everywhere, lock previously free features behind paywalls, or sell useless digital merchandise. (give your avatar a neat hat!)
The whole business is scummy because fundamentally it is convincing you to spend money on things you don't need. Couple that with the modern web's hands off anything goes even if it's outright malware ads and there really is no lower form of life. Your bank account was drained because your computer got hacked because a mandatory ad played? Sounds like a you problem. The utterly stupid wellness craze we are in is a product of this.
Folks are trying these worthless supplements for things like treating cancer. Still other supplements contain outright illegal ingredients because they come from dodgy suppliers who do not GAF. An unregulated ad environment is pushing online casinos as the solution to all your money woes in a never lose kind of campaign.
No, advertising is what gave us the T zone promoting cigarette use, the patent medicines that killed people and contained illegal drugs, and the current crop of garbage like supplements and cannabis oils containing straight up THC in them where it's illegal, all the crap we hate on the web, and worst of all, we still get the privilege of paying for it. Screw. That.
Sorry, I hate ads.
🚀 lars_the_bear [OP] · Mar 02 at 17:21:
@darkghost : Wow! Just... wow. In the UK at least, traditional advertising in newspapers and on billboards is subject to at least some level of regulation. You can't advertise cures for cancer, unless you can back up your claims. On the web -- who knows? I presume that UK advertisers still have to submit to regulation but, to be honest, I'm not sure.
We should be teaching our kids not to trust advertising. We probably are, but the advertisers are better funded than we are.
It's actually worse than just saying "Don't trust advertising", or even believing that you don't trust advertising. Because your meatbrain is highly suggestible, and those jingles get stuck in there and with spaced repetition form solid connections. Then, when shopping, you will say to yourself: I have this great idea to try Tide, or buy a Ford truck...
Advertising is a prime example of market failure. It's the only industry that aims to maximise waste. They create artificial needs instead of meeting exitsting needs. Why waste money making a better product when you can spend half as much on a huge psyop campaign to gaslight people into thinking your product makes them healthier, sexier, more socialy connected, respectable, etc. Supply and demand fail when demand can be purchased as a product. This is why society has become so consumerist and why the 100x productivity increases of the last 50 years of technollogy has not led to us working any less.
What's even more profitable is bribing some politicians with a few million to get billion dollar contracts and not have to peddle crap to individuals at all
@lars_the_bear in the US - supplements are basically unregulated. There's a few small exceptions (like prenatal vitamins) but yeah, you could go into a drugstore and buy some supplement. and there's no oversight into safety, how effective it is at actually doing anything, etc like we have for medications.
This results in lots of scams involving supplements. You'll see ads that use non-specific language like "helps with" and other weasel words to imply a supplement is a treatment for something without outright claiming it is. You're basically just buying snake oil.
If government oversight were helpful, the US population would not be predominantly obese, diabetic, and taking Ozempic or whatever the new miracle drug is being advertised non-stop today.
🚀 lars_the_bear [OP] · Mar 03 at 15:54:
@jprjr : supplements are basically unregulatd in the UK, too. But advertising -- at least in its traditional form -- is regulated. So I guess unproven medical treatments are more advertised in unregulated places.
👻 darkghost · Mar 03 at 17:58:
Try feces for all that ails you! Cheap and readily available! Now my lawyers tell me I must utter the magic make this legal phrase. "These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease."
🚀 thoughtterminatingcliche · Mar 03 at 18:02:
I am like this. The only weird one annoyed by any ad in my surroundings. I also demand people mute commercial breaks, LOL. It is the compressor my friend. Some evil wizard pays up those guys to dial the fucking compressor all the way up. When the commercial break kicks in all hell breaks loose...
Fecal transplants are not entirely without merit, given what we are learning about gut-to-everything connection.
In amateur setting, a messy disaster.
And yes. The wall of noise.
👻 darkghost · Mar 03 at 19:45:
@stack This is something I worked on in the past. A facial cream made of the stuff will not, however, make you younger and sexier. For the latter it is most surely the opposite.
@darkghost, no way! A shit face cream?
Original Post
Is hating online advertising weird? I asked my son (25) how he can bear to watch videos on YouTube, when they're interrupted by advertising every few minutes. He looked at me is if I'd just laid on egg. That, apparently, is just how things are -- he didn't find it odd at all. He found _me_ odd for objecting to it. Do you have to be old, like me, to find online advertising objectionable? The popularity of ad-blockers suggests not, but perhaps only the old folks use them? Is viewing the world...