Comment by make3 3 days ago
Your work exploits people's addictive propensity and behaviours, and gives corporations incentives and tools to build on that.
Insane spin you're putting on it. At best, you're a cog in one of the worst recent evolutions of capitalism.
Advertising is not a recent evolution of capitalism, it's a foundational piece of it. Whatever you do as a job would not exist if there was no one marketing it. This hostility seems insane.
“No advertisements” seems extreme to me. I want to know when a good band is playing at a local venue, or has an album out. I like hearing about new books, or a restaurant near me.
The absolutist position that “all ads are always bad” is a non-starter for me. Especially as long as we exist in a capitalist system. Small business, indie creators, etc. must advertise in some fashion to survive. It’s only the behemoths that could afford to stop doing it (ironically). I’ve never really understood why, e.g. Pepsi and Coke spend so much on advertising: most people already have a preference and I am skeptical that the millions they spend actually moves the needle either way. (“Is Pepsi okay?” “It absolutely is not.”)
>I’ve never really understood why, e.g. Pepsi and Coke spend so much on advertising
When was the last time you saw an ad for something non digital and you stopped everything and bought it or even made concrete plans to do so later ? Probably almost never right ? So why still so many ads ? More importantly, why is it still so profitable ?
Because much of the impact of advertising is sub conscious imprint rather than conscious action. Have you ever been in a grocery store and you needed to get something and picked a "random" brand ? Yeah, that choice may not have been so random after all. Or perhaps you're sitting at home or work and have a sudden seemingly unprompted craving for <insert food place>. Yeah, maybe not so unprompted.
The early theorists of capitalism didn't imagine that advanced psychology (that didn't even exist back then) would be used to convince people to buy $product.
Messages of that sophistication are always dangerous, and modern advertising is the most widespread example of it.
The hostility is more than justified, I can only hope the whole industry is regulated downwards, even if whatever company I work for sells less.
Exploitative ads are a small minority. I also think gambling advertising should be banned.