The idea feels like sci-fi because you’re so used to it, imagining ads gone feels like asking to outlaw gravity. But humanity had been free of current forms of advertising for 99.9% of its existence. Word-of-mouth and community networks worked just fine. First-party websites and online communities would now improve on that.
The traditional argument pro-advertising—that it provides consumers with necessary information—hasn’t been valid for decades.
I’ve had adblockers on my browsers for years and pay for ad-free streaming. I easily went over a decade without seeing an ad on a screen in my own home. But when I’d go to a restaurant that had TVs (or to my mom’s house where she’d run the TV constantly) I’d marvel at how unwatchable it was. Just a constant interruption.
My wife has a friend who produced a TV series for Tubi and so we signed up to check it out and, wow. I had to tap out of watching it because of the ads. Just completely obnoxious and loud.
Let’s ban all persuasive advertising! No reason not to let people make a list of features or something, like a notification, but that’s it.
#YES, PLEASE.
I have been fighting advertising in my own way since the early 2000s:
- I abandoned broadcast radio in the mid-1990s. I can’t recall the last time I turned on a car radio.
- I abandoned broadcast TV in 2001
- I jumped on board with Adblock the moment it was released for Phoenix (now Firefox) back in 2004
- The lone streaming service I actually subscribe to is the cheapest non-advertising tier available
- Torrenting covers many of the remaining gaps
- Even my Internet Radio stations are chosen primarily through lack of advertising.
It’s gotten to the point where stumbling across an ad is the mental equivalent to nails on a chalkboard.
How exactly do you define advertising? An overly broad definition would forbid, for example, a dentist from putting a sign in front of their office saying they’re a dentist.
The thing is I don’t think I would mind advertising if it wasn’t shoved down my throat 24/7. The fact I can’t read a webpage without ads blocking everything, I can’t watch TV without more than half of the show’s runtime being ads in and out of segments, I can’t even step outside without seeing the billboard or another 5 ads shoved in my mailbox!
I get 15 some-odd emails a day from different companies trying to get me to buy things. I block them and they pop up with a different email address. I can’t even open my email without ads popping up masquerading as actual messages (Gmail). Don’t get me started on the entire Google app thing.
I can’t open an online map without getting SPONSERED listings. And places I use the app to order from try to advertise me their own food WHILE I’M ORDERING. Panda Express started asking me if I want a subscription to Starz or whatever.
NO. NO. NO.
I’m exhausted. I want to go to a store without being immediately inundated with ads or sellers. “Buy this!” NO. LEAVE ME ALONE.
I’m overwhelmed. I’m overstimulated. I’m done. I don’t care how “quirky” or “flashy” or “hip” your ads are. I refuse to buy anything I see ads for now. It’s too much. Shut up.
TL;DR: we need controls and limits to who, what, where, and how things are advertised. It should be an enforcable crime to have ads louder than a certain decibel for one. But it’s not enforced and fines aren’t more than a drop in the bucket. I doubt I’ll see it in ny lifetime.
I see advertising as a necessary evil. It helps small businesses take off and stay afloat (especially when alternatives for being funded aren’t viable for them), but at the same time it basically promotes corporate greed by shoving ads down our throats.
Abolishing advertising entirely would be improbable. I just want it to be toned down to the point where we’re all comfortable with it. Too much of a good thing inevitably becomes a bad thing. But too little of a good thing is also a bad thing. So things should be taken in moderation. In the case of advertising, the first statement applies; there’s way too much of it, it’s really in-your-face and disruptive, and we’re all getting sick of it.
As I sat down this morning to enjoy my warm and full-flavored Folger’s coffee, it got me thinking: traditional advertising might disappear, but something sneakier would inevitably fill the void: product placement.
“Online communities” are great, but how do you stop them from being infiltrated by corporate astroturfers within five minutes of creation? Doesn’t every major brand have a low-overhead keyboard farm posting social media and forum comments to make them look good?
Ultimately some ads will become illegal as legit advertisers (large corps), get pissed off at all the dick pill ads mixed in with their content.
Just making billboards ads illegal. It would make every city and the places in-between instantly better
OTA tv would no longer be possible, nor radio AM or FM.
Newspapers (what is left of them) would no longer be possible, neither wouild magazines.
A good deal of the internet is supported by ads too.
If you are willing to give up everything that is supported by ads, I suppose it could work.Even with an adblock and the best privacy controls available, you cannot escape the effects of advertising. Article headlines will still be clickbait. Online recipes will still have long, unnecessary stories at the start. Companies will still want your email for trivial things so they can spam you. There are a hundred ways that advertising affects culture, and it’s not something that can change based on individual effort.
Ads are an odd concept—it’s someone paying money to toot their own horn, which most of the civilized world looks down upon. In fact, the best way to sell me your product is to have the humility to tell me its downsides or give me a nuanced explanation of when to buy your product vs. a competitor. Otherwise, it’s always much better to let someone else sing your praises. I do find documentation, videos, and other factual information about a product to be the best possible sales pitch—give me an accurate picture of it, and if it’s really any good, I might just buy it. If I think you’re trying to bullshit me, I’ll assume your product has to be shit, or otherwise you’d just tell me the facts.
Cool idea but we live under the violent imposition of capitalism.
Lets try it and see what happens. No advertising seems like a reasonable response to advertising everywhere all the time.
