Comment by theoreticalmal 2 days ago
That’s quite a stretch. I loathe ads as much as anyone else here, but I don’t consider being exposed to them as violating the sanctity of my mind (is my mind even sacrosanct, such that it could be violated?) it’s just something I don’t like.
And yes, attention is absolutely a currency that can be used to pay for things. Like any other voluntary transaction, no one is entitled to my attention unless we both voluntarily agree to it.
Advertisements have been proven countless times to be a form of psychological manipulation, and a very potent one that works very well. After all, if it didn't work we wouldn't be seeing ads crop up literally every-fucking-where, including these days even in our very own night sky in the form of drone lightshows. The ad companies have huge teams of mental health experts in order to maximize the reach & impact of their advertisements on the general populace.
Ads are so powerful that they've even managed to twist the truth about plenty of horrific shit happening to the point of affecting the health and safety of real people, sometimes literally on a global scale. Chiquita bananas, De Beers, Nestle, Oil & Gas companies, and must I remind you of Tobacco companies (and surprise surprise, the same people who were doing the ads for Big Tobacco are the ones doing ad campaigns for O&G companies now)? There have been SO MANY examples from all these companies of using advertisements to trick and manipulate people & politicians, oftentimes just straight up lying, like the Tobacco companies lying about the adverse health effects despite knowing for decades what the adverse health effects were, Or Oil & Gas companies lying about climate change via comprehensive astroturfing & advertisement campaigns [1].
This all barely scratches the surface, too, especially these days where you have platforms like Google and Meta enabling genocides, mass political interference and pushing things like crypto scams, gambling ads and other similarly heinous and harmful shit to the entire internet.
The TL;DR of all of this is that yes, advertisements absolutely are psychological warfare. They have been and continue to be used for absolutely vile and heinous activities, and the advertisers employ huge teams of people to ensure that their mass influence machine runs smoothly, overtaking everyone's minds slowly but surely with nothing but pure lies fabricated solely to sell people products they absolutely do not, and will never need.
> I don’t consider being exposed to them as violating the sanctity of my mind
I do. I think it's a form of mind rape. You're trying to read something and suddenly you've got corporations inserting their brands and jingles and taglines into your mind without your consent. That's unacceptable.
> attention is absolutely a currency that can be used to pay for things
No. Attention is a cognitive function. It has none of the properties of currency.
These corporations are sending you stuff for free. They are hoping you will pay attention to the ads. At no point did they charge you any money. You are not obligated to make their advertising campaigns a success.
They are taking a risk. They are assuming you will pay attention. We are entirely within our rights to deny them their payoff. They sent you stuff for free with noise and garbage attached. You can trash the garbage and filter out the noise. They have only themselves to blame.
That implies voluntarily paying attention to adverts, as an informal contractual obligation. You aren't allowed on Youtube any more because you haven't been allowing the adverts to influence you enough. You can't look away or think about something else, that's cheating on the deal.