Advertising isn’t an inherently bad thing; it’s just gotten way out of control.
Advertising is an inherently bad thing. You have been indoctrinated by a culture dominated by ad men for the past 70 years
Advertising does the above image the overwhelming majority of the time: it funds a product or service and then uses that role as a funder to insidiously destroy the service. Advertising has recognized that customers realize it’s toxic impact so it now quickly entrenches itself in every single industry and product that has eyes on it whenever possible at all costs so it can continue its sociopathic process of destroying functionality and ignoring ethics in favor of “what’s the right product? The one I am selling, of course”
What do you possibly think advertising is good for? Telling you about medicine so you can second guess the doctor that has had decades of experience and insist upon something you heard about on hulu? Destroying everything that was good about the Internet? Plastering every space with so much visual clutter and vibrant color because it drives sales that people now covet muted color palettes at home to escape the constant stimulation?
Destroy the advertising industry
How do people find new products or services without some form of advertising? Yeah everything you said was bad, but they all have solutions if the government is willing. Many countries do not allow advertisements of pharmaceuticals, for example.
Products and services should only be findable when you actually need them. Think using a search engine to find a specific good, or a business sign labeling an establishment. Such bare bones information could be considered advertising, but it does less to to drive human behavior than facilitate it. It’s not convincing you to get something, but helping you get what you already decided you need.
The advertising problem, like all problems in capitalism, stem from the ever increasing desire to outcompete and be the only power in town; the need to not just meet the needs of society, but have more power than everyone else in society. Competition drives innovation, but to what end?
Spoiler alert: the end is holding power over fellow men, not making life better for you or them. This evolutionary force optimizes for something other than you as an individual, just like Darwinian evolution.
Searchable directories. Word of mouth. Community recommendations.
Or just ask the person at the store that sells the things.
You do realize that not every business in the country that advertises is a mega conglomerate bent on world domination, right?
Okay, how do those small businesses handle their advertising?
Facebook, google, shitty firms that use local direct mailing campaigns, etc. Sure, your local mechanic isn’t scheming to topple democracy and ruin every product, but they are enabling those who do and skewing results to give themselves an unfair advantage over newer businesses that enter the market because they have the privilege of having the capital to do an adsense buy and maybe hire someone who can fuck with SEO bullshit
Advertising does not need to exist. There simply needs to be a directory of businesses. If I search for mechanics I can find the ones around me. Boom, done. The yellow pages worked for years. I don’t need google to skew results to show me a specific mechanic that happened to spend more money on advertising. I don’t need a random flyer in my mail that reminds me that the concept of a mechanic is still a thing that exists and they happen to be in my area, shocker.
I’m more with the opposite view: Advertising, which is manipulating people into buying your product, IS inherently a bad thing. Although some cases may be legitimate.
How do you expect people to find out about new businesses? Especially ones without a brick and mortar storefront.
A directory of businesses that is free of gaming the system by paying to play was once the goal of google. If that if functional it is excellent and all it needs to be. It also prevents more established businesses from having even more of an unfair advantage. They already have word of mouth and reviews; why should they be able to simply buy a space that places them on top of popular queries and drown out anyone who enters the market?
Like back in 1999-2002 or so google was constantly adjusting their algorithm to stop people who gamed SEO. Their goal then was that when you searched “custom garfield cum blanket” you got stores that sold exactly that, and ideally the original one if there were knockoffs. That’s what made them a household name and the “king of search” and why you don’t hear about altavista or ask Jeeves anymore
Then they started to realize there was a market emerging for people that could master SEO and slowly but surely they just gave into the advertising side of things. It started with allowing SEO bullshit to go unchecked and eventually turned into now where you can literally buy the first 1 or 2 results of a search query, the first page is useless, and the second page is gone to direct you to a new search that can generate more ad revenue. They’ve utterly destroyed their product
They put a sign on the building that says “Now Open”, put the building on the maps, and invite local food critics in for a review.
Advertising will always get out of control. It is the nature of the beast. 1 ad that is skippable after 5 seconds before a video was fine, now it’s multiple unskippable ads before and throughout the video.
“Subscribe for no ads” until the unsaitable desire for ad revenue becomes “Subscribe for fewer ads”.
I was online in the early days of the Internet and didn’t use an ad block for quite some time. I was fine with sites getting ad revenue from banner ads I would ignore. Then one day I encountered a banner ads the literally screamed at me through my speakers when I moused over it and I couldn’t download an ad blocker fast enough.
Advertising never stops at a reasonable level, is will always push further until it finds the level people won’t tolerate then pulls back jusssst a little. The only reasonable response is to not tolerate them at all.
