Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence

https://voxeu.org/article/advertising-major-source-human-dissatisfaction

by howard941 • 7 years ago

581 523 7 years ago

chronogram• 7 years ago

This URL was blocked by a content blocker. Hm! https://outline.com/KrV9Pw

cm201222• 7 years ago

Doubling of advertising expidenture (Which is a massive, sea change) would apparently make people 3% less happy. So basically it has a negligible impact on happiness even if this analysis is true.

I highly doubt it is true though. It's a purely correlational study, that says from 1980-2011, advertising increased and people in general got 3% less happy. They say they accounted for GDP when doing their regression, but so many other things affect advertising spend as a whole that wouldn't show there. More globalization coming to a country (as markets open up and global firms find advertising worth their while), changes in industry make-up, political election cycles becoming more heated, internet connectivity (which would be huge in the time period they studied, and would greatly impact ad spend numbers with it), etc.

It is really, really hard to actually change people's opinions with advertising. The closest you can do is convert their existing opinions into actions. There is a ton of good academic literature on this - here's a good primer: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...

jacquesm5• 7 years ago

So, halving it would make people 3% more happy. I say halve it 30 times in a row then. These silly stats make no sense at all.

Matticus_Rex2• 7 years ago

That doesn't follow.

dTal5• 7 years ago

Percentages don't work that way. Don't blame the stats for your own misunderstanding.

kazinator• 7 years ago

The spending on advertizing likely has diminishing returns. The marginal decrease in satisfaction that would come from doubling the spending is possibly smaller than the baseline decrease caused by the initial expenditure.

cm201222• 7 years ago

There's nothing in their data to support this, and if the effect was there they would have seen it (since they have yearly happiness data). They describe a linear correlation.

anoncake12• 7 years ago

Happiness is the one thing we should be optimizing for. 3% is not negligible if there is no trade-off.

cm201222• 7 years ago

Again, I don't think the correlation holds in the first place. But if it did, there absolutely is a trade-off. It's more or less impossible to grow any endeavor beyond local scale without ads, unless you're lucky enough to be an industry with a strong viral or press component. Take a look at the S-1s of most companies that go public. 9/10 of the companies have been able to grow because of ads.

return17• 7 years ago

Happiness is the one thing we should be optimizing for

here s some more spurious correlations. Countries with very high happiness have some of the highest suicide rates. happiness might be dangerous to the survival of the species. We should optimize against it

https://medium.com/@dtg319/happier-countries-are-more-suicid...

Nasrudith4• 7 years ago

I disagree - especially since optimizing for anything blindly/without constraints can lead to horrific outcomes.

Optimizing for happiness would logically call for denying unpleasant truths because pointing them out would make people unhappy and downright inhumanities - if the depressed commit suicide it would drive up the average happiness. Even if given tighter constraints it would still have disturbing ignorance is bliss promotion.

JohnFen26• 7 years ago

So basically it has a negligible impact on happiness even if this analysis is true.

Not to those 3%, and since advertising provides very little benefit to anyone who isn't in the ad business, I would be happy to that 3%.

cm201222• 7 years ago

I don't think that correlation is accurate. But even if it is, there is a trade-off: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20034507

return17• 7 years ago

Either advertising is so powerful as to rule the world, or it's so useless that nobody benefits from it. I 'd say , without adequate research on the effectiveness of advertising, these correlational studies are only marginally interesting.

FabHK9• 7 years ago

So basically it has a negligible impact on happiness even if this analysis is true.

You are wrong. The paper goes on to say, in the very next sentence, that 3% is "approximately one half the absolute size of the marriage effect on life satisfaction, or approximately one quarter of the absolute size of the effect of being unemployed", thus (while smaller), it's the same order of magnitude.

Presumably you do not consider the impact of marriage or unemployment "basically negligible"?

It is really, really hard to actually change people's opinions with advertising.

That may be as it may, but that is not what the paper is talking about.

cm201222• 7 years ago

I saw that. I still think it's small. 3% is 3%, even if their measure shows marriage being 6%.

Changing peoples minds about their self worth is still changing their mind.

scottrogowski• 7 years ago

This. I am surprised to see hacker news jump on this as proof that advertising causes reduced happiness when this article can only conclude that they are correlated. The common statistical maxim is that correlation does not imply causation. A far more likely scenario, in my opinion, is that greater development is associated with both increased advertising and a reduction in happiness. And yes, the summary does state that they were able to show that it is uncorrelated with GDP but what's telling is that the prominent bar graph is "uncorrected". So, after correcting, the advertising effect may be so minor that they chose not to graph it at all.

I do my best to limit advertising in my own life because I myself believe that I am a happier person without it. This study, however, is misleading and doesn't give us evidence of much of anything.

countavdhesh• 7 years ago

GDP measures activity involving money, but makes no distinction between useful, useless and harmful activity. the cost of cleaning up pollution is added to the GDP.

jandrese3• 7 years ago

Isn't this what you would expect? Advertising fundamentally is trying to convince you that you need something. If you're perfectly happy with your current situation then what else would you need? So the advertising has to convince you that you're not happy but that there is a product that you can buy that will increase your happiness.

You're basically being negged by advertisers.

maxxxxx2• 7 years ago

I guess that’s the current form of advertising. It tries to create demand where there has been none before. You could also imagine advertising that tries to address your actual needs. Unfortunately that probably would make a much smaller market.

anoncake12• 7 years ago

Current? A German philosopher wrote in 1844:

every person speculates on creating a new need in another, so as to drive him to fresh sacrifice, to place him in a new dependence and to seduce him into a new mode of enjoyment and therefore economic ruin.

rimliu• 7 years ago

I would not say it works that way for me. I see most advertising as a visual noice and/or annoying interruption. I think majority of the time I am not even aware what is being advertised.

djtriptych2• 7 years ago

Probably it's almost impossible to measure one's own reaction to ubiquitous advertising. Ignoring it consciously does not mean you are unaffected.

BonesJustice• 7 years ago

Same, but (unfortunately) I suspect we are in the minority. Whenever I visit my parents' house, there are at least two separate TVs on, regardless of whether someone is actually in the room watching. There's probably a 50% chance that there's an ad playing in that house at any given moment.

I ask my dad, "Why do you pay $300/month+ to have ads shoved down your throat?" He responded with some non sequitur like, "How else do you know what's going on in the world?" Wat.

Apparently there is some value in watching the same catheter ads over and over that I was not previously aware of.

lordnacho2• 7 years ago

Well like it says there's two kinds.

One is "Hey, did you know this thing exists? Check it out! Here are all the tests it passed, realistic cost of ownership, and locations where it is in stock".

The other is "Look at this woman, isn't she fascinating? People like her will desire you more if you buy the thing she's lying on top of. Actual woman not included."

Unfortunately, people have discovered type 2 is effective for a lot of things. Not only that, there are no scruples at all with appealing to people in this kind of way. It's not lying in the normal sense, but it is manipulation, or an attempt at it. Current dogma seems to be that rational people can just take the type 1 info out of your type 2 advert and think with the appropriate organ.

rwc• 7 years ago

But can you point to a time in human history where type 2 wasn't the predominant form of advertising? This is not some modern discovery or exploit.

Gibbon12• 7 years ago

Marketing has a light side and a dark side.

Light side: Closing the loop between what the customer wants, what their actual problems are, and what engineering and manufacturing can deliver.

Darkside: Ladies you need to use our spray or else your hoo-haw will stink.

burntoutcase4• 7 years ago

Current dogma seems to be that rational people can just take the type 1 info out of your type 2 advert and think with the appropriate organ.

I'd rather just consign the type 2 adverts to the nearest null device and pick up a copy of Consumer Reports when I want factual information about a product. It helps that most of the women used in advertising are just skinny blondes that you can get for a dime a dozen in Stepford, CT.

deogeo6• 7 years ago

One is "Hey, did you know this thing exists? Check it out! Here are all the tests it passed, realistic cost of ownership, and locations where it is in stock".

I almost never see ads of type one - in fact, even finding that information is usually made accidentally or deliberately difficult.

JohnFen26• 7 years ago

One is "Hey, did you know this thing exists? Check it out! Here are all the tests it passed, realistic cost of ownership, and locations where it is in stock".

I'm pretty sure that I haven't seen that sort of ad since the late '80s.

mc32• 7 years ago

"We" had a chance to re-set this at the dawn of Internet Indexing and Search and discovery Optimization, but Overture (and then Google and later FB and TWTTR, at al) and "us" enabled and encouraged advertising to become the driving force of the internet. We could have had a different ad-free internet, but no one was willing to pay that bill.

elorant• 7 years ago

And then there is a third kind which says hey dude we know you bought a pair of Timberlands last year so here are offers from their new line-up.

The web has enabled unprecedented levels of intrusion for advertisers.

DoreenMichele6• 7 years ago

I'm not a copywriter in the sense of "person who writes adverts," but I am someone who writes copy for website content.

One of the problems is that it isn't even good communication to say (for example) "This device has a 7 inch screen." That's mostly useless information for most people.

It's much more genuinely helpful to tell people something like "You can easily read our large screen even in bright sunlight." Most people aren't going to see specs concerning screen size and mentally translate that to "Woah, this will make my life easier because it will be more readable than the dinky thing I currently use."

Good product descriptions explain to you what this thing will do for you. If it gives a spec, such as weight, it needs to also tell you why this matters -- such as "this is lightweight for this type product, making it much more portable than average so you can take it with you to the work site."

There is no clear dividing line between the kind of description that explains you can do X with this product and the kind of advertising that leaps to implying "And then women will fall madly in love with you and you will be the new Don Juan of your neighborhood!"

Over the years, I've wondered a great deal where the dividing line is between good communication and active manipulation. I think that line is actually quite fuzzy.

When push comes to shove, if you want to tell people about X, you can be assumed to have an agenda of some sort. But, most days, I'm reluctant to suggest the world would be a better place if we all just stopped communicating entirely.

tim3333• 7 years ago

You've missed one of the biggest kinds which is buy these things from us for 25% less than the competitors. I quite like that kind if genuine.

harry8• 7 years ago

only two? Neither is negging either.

How does "Look at this beautiful person, just look. Your life isn't like this. Ha. You suck. You're a failure. You're ugly, you're stupid and nobody likes you and you haven't even got $product" "This family is so much happier and more well adjusted than yours, you're a rubbish parent and you don't even have $product"

Every ad in fashion be it for cream or stink or (gasp) sometimes even clothes. Loads of mirrors in every shopping centre aren't there?

Negging is exactly right. Make people afraid and sad. Fear of missing out, fear of weapons of mass destruction, fear that "maybe they don't really like me." Sometimes it's subtle eg Clooney selling coffee and sometimes it really isn't, eg Life Insurance ads and the Iraqi invasion. (Maybe some pushing the idea believed in WMD - that's not the point. It was levered very thoroughly to sell the war - be right or wrong).

Teaching children to identify and analyse psychologically manipulative techniques is essential for their mental well-being.

Obviously it's not just ads. There's a load of academic research that follows the same pattern. "You need to be terrified about your children's screen time." Maybe I do but do you have the research or are you just stoking fear to promote your career? The latter definitely exists.

jressey2• 7 years ago

I would go further and state that our entire economy and society are based on the manufacturing of demand. There are so few things we actually need. Food, water, clothing, shelter. Everything else is a luxury you've been convinced to buy (or it was given to you by someone who was convinced).

I'm not talking about ethics here, just straight facts.

WalterBright2• 7 years ago

Prison provides food, water, clothing and shelter. We send people there to punish them.

netsharc2• 7 years ago

Luxury goods are status symbols, we buy them because we crave status because deep down we crave recognition from others in society. So I wonder if urbanization/the trend towards more loneliness is the problem. If you have a tightly-knit community, you'd have people who appreciate you because of your character, sense of humor or good company; not because you drive a fancy car. And nowadays we don't really have real communities anymore, just polarization through the Internet, where people try to feel better about themselves by putting down others.

This (2+ hours) documentary about status is quite eye opening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1MqJPHxy6g

XCSme• 7 years ago

Depends what you refer to when you say "need". Is internet a luxury? I want to video call my parents thousand of kilometers away (webcam). I want to do it without the connection being interrupted every second (good internet connection). I want to be able to distinguish my mother from my father (HD webcam) and hear them without buzzing sounds (good microphone). But wait! There's this thing called a "smartphone" that has good camera and microphone, and you don't have to be sitting in the dark corner where your PC is.

The problem with ads is that most of the times they promote a product for a need that either doesn't exist or does not apply to you, but still, after being spammed a lot you might give in and think you actually need that.

lovecg• 7 years ago

At its best, advertising is a form of search technology. If I have a need A and there’s a company out there providing exactly A, it’s awesome if I find out about it - both sides benefit from the transaction. To me this sort of advertising seems ethical and useful. Unfortunately there’s of course the other kind, based on deception, psychological tricks, and appeal to emotion.

frenchy• 7 years ago

At its best, advertising is a form of search technology

That's not advertising. That's curation. Mixing these up is like mixing up astronomy and astrology.

dTal5• 7 years ago

Advertising is not a good system for that. If there are multiple companies providing A (the usual situation), advertising will not help you choose well. If you think you need A but in fact A is quite harmful and you're best off avoiding it in favor of B, but there's no money in B, advertising will actively attempt to mislead you.

There is no magical ethical kind of advertising based on informing the customer. All advertising is 100% biased towards the decision of purchasing the product. That's what makes it advertising.

anoncake12• 7 years ago

It's also one reason we fail to stop the climate crisis. It's hard to reduce our emissions if we "need" as much as our economy can produce.

teawrecks3• 7 years ago

I think advertising is to marketing as space travel is to rocket science. An ideal situation for space travel is to be able to teleport anything anywhere, but that's not possible yet, so they build rockets to travel as fast as currently possible. Similarly, an ideal situation for advertising is to read each person's mind, determine exactly what products they are looking for but aren't yet aware of, and make them aware. But that's not possible yet, so they use marketing spam to make aware as many people as possible.

bediger40004• 7 years ago

That seems like an unreasonably optimistic viewpoint, based on the history of advertising, and indeed, mass market product of anything.

Optimistically: determine exactly what products they are looking for but aren't yet aware of,

Realistically: determine what high-margin products you could possible convince them of, and show those products in as intrusive a manner possible

The Internet seems to have made us all aware that the depths of human dishonesty and unethicality have no bottom.

ACow_Adonis9• 7 years ago

except the goal of marketing is not inherently to meet a person's needs.

At the macro level, it's maximising needs met, but at the micro level this is done by both initiating and implanting desires that otherwise aren't present or necessary, and by creating problems/pain points (which then, as a second order effect, create a need, which is met by the product).

In economic terms, advertisers aim to maximise locally measured utility, but they do this by externalising the costs of the dis-utility they deliberately create.

Like the proverbial glass salesman, garbage man, or mafia, they provide a theoretical good, but they've found business booms if they can generate their own demand by throwing rocks through windows, trashing the town, or partaking in their own crime to sell their protection services.

In our instance, the town is our own psychological and social state, and while we don't account for these externalities andnegatives, they will keep actively damaging us because its in their interest and locally optimal from their pint of view...

JohnFen26• 7 years ago

Similarly, an ideal situation for advertising is to read each person's mind, determine exactly what products they are looking for but aren't yet aware of, and make them aware.

If marketers had that power, that's not how they'd use it. Instead, what they'd do is deploy a powerful analytic system to determine what your touch points are, in order to learn how to more effectively manipulate you to make you want whatever it is they happen to be selling.

Or, to use currently fashionable marketer-speak, they'd use it to move you through the funnel more efficiently.

conanbatt2• 7 years ago

Humans enjoy things more based on their subjective interpretation of it.

Advertising makes you enjoy things more.

jandrese3• 7 years ago

That's a bold claim. Can you elaborate on it some more? I'm not sure how the advertising is helping our interpretation in this case.

JohnFen26• 7 years ago

I am not willing to let others tell me what to think and feel. Particularly not advertisers, who don't have my best interest at heart.

spinach• 7 years ago

It doesn't just convince you of something, it even drives culture, like beauty and fashion. Advertising has changed how women look and perceive themselves and the products they buy. None of it is needed. Make-up, shaving products, creams, etc. Fashion has turned into fast fashion. It's just a waste of natural resources and creates plastic waste.

m463• 7 years ago

Advertising fundamentally is trying to convince you that you need something.

I think this is how we have an increase in hoarding behavior.

baddox2• 7 years ago

So the advertising has to convince you that you're not happy

That claim doesn't follow. Some people actually are unhappy, or would actually be happier if they discovered and purchased certain products.

I'm not claiming that advertising is or isn't a net positive, but this part of your argument doesn't hold up. It's kind of like saying "dating, or asking someone on a date, is fundamentally trying to convince someone that they would be happier with you; if they were perfectly happy already what else would they need?; so you have to convince them that they're not happy just to get them to go on a date with you; thus asking someone on a date if basically negging."

grenoire• 7 years ago

If someone is perfectly happy, then they cannot be happier with someone else. At the hyperbole, your argument doesn't hold either.

throwayEngineer• 7 years ago

I can't help but imagine there are worse companies than others for this.

Between Apple and Samsung, these are companies that advertise Average products but charge luxury pricing.

I find this incredibly unethical. But my non Engineering counterparts believe that Sales are necessary.

plg• 7 years ago

my kids only watch netflix and shows/movies we buy on iTunes

so basically they see virtually no ads, SO unlike my experience growing up watching network TV where every 12 minutes there was a series of 5 or 6 30-second ads

burntoutcase4• 7 years ago

They might not see explicit advertisements, but they're getting exposed to a metric assload of product placement.

freehunter2• 7 years ago

Honest question and I don't have super strong opinions on the subject, but is product placement really that big of a negative? If I open someone's fridge, I don't see a bunch of stuff with the labels conveniently turned backwards or removed, I see Coca-Cola and Sunny-D and Hellman's Mayo and Heinz ketchup. If I walk through a college classroom I don't see a bunch of laptops with featureless lids, I see Apple logos and Dell logos and HP logos. If I'm driving down the road, I don't see a bunch of de-badged cars, I see Chevy logos and Ford logos and VW logos.

Is it really detracting from a movie to have a bottle of Pepsi sitting on the table at dinner while they're eating their Pizza Hut pizza? Isn't that how the real world actually exists?

Basically: aren't we all exposed to a metric assload of product placement all day anyway?

jacquesm5• 7 years ago

And what do you think Netflix's ranking is if not advertising?

'movies we recommend based on other movies you've seen' and so on.

jacobcohen11• 7 years ago

But if you already pay for Neflix's service and this is just another part of it. Advertising is supposed to sell, or upsell a product, which isn't what the ranking system does.

ACow_Adonis9• 7 years ago

assuming he's like me (ad blockers, limited tv, etc), I have a Netflix account, and I don't even honestly know what 'Netflix ranking' is.

Assumimg it is something like Netflix's recommendation service, well, this might come back to an difference in philosophy: I don't need/want to be recommended shows to watch, and I don't use recommender/suggestions.

One does not have a need/desire to consume media as an abstract concept, so the idea that one has a problem of "I want to watch something but i don't know what" is a literal nonsensical statement/problem.

arcticfox• 7 years ago

That really seems to be stretching 'advertising' beyond its definition to me. That seems like even less of 'advertising' than looking at a menu and trying to decide what to order, given that you've already paid for the service (for now, at least).

jahewson• 7 years ago

so basically they see virtually no ads

(Camera slowly pans to bottle of coca-cola)

jandrese3• 7 years ago

Hell, I watched GI Joe, Transformers, and He-Man when I was a kid. That's basically 22 minutes of advertising with 8 minutes of breaks for more advertising.

bayouborne2• 7 years ago

"The effect implies that a hypothetical doubling of advertising expenditure would result in a 3% drop in life satisfaction. That is approximately one half the absolute size of the marriage effect on life satisfaction, or approximately one quarter of the absolute size of the effect of being unemployed."

Does marriage, on average, across cultures, have a proven detrimental effect on life satisfaction?

djtriptych2• 7 years ago

I think they say "absolute size" to mean absolute value. e.g. 3% drop is half the absolute size of a 6% rise.

bayouborne2• 7 years ago

ah, thank you.

dan-robertson• 7 years ago

Higher, assuming that it came from this reference at the bottom of the article:

https://www.pnas.org/content/100/19/11176

theonlyklas• 7 years ago

Examining 87 countries (N = 292,525) covering a period of 29 years, marriage will increase life satisfaction. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280308599_The_Life_...

burntoutcase4• 7 years ago

I'm not surprised. Advertising is nothing but private-sector psyops.

Toine• 7 years ago

Mimetic theory explains why

return17• 7 years ago

Germany after 1989,

Convenient. I think they should include DDR which had no advertising at all.

jacquesm5• 7 years ago

That is not correct. Over the highways there were all kinds of signs back in the day, mostly insurance.

brentm• 7 years ago

Though without advertising don't we have less jobs and seamingly greater dissatisfaction with lack of income?

oregontechninja2• 7 years ago

The jobs are abstract time waisters anyhow. Let me surf and hike my days away while the machines toil in the fields.

netsharc2• 7 years ago

It seems like it's the gospel of capitalism (or neo-liberalism?) that has fooled of us that we need more money to be more happy.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-...

As a loner, one night I was sitting with friends, talking and laughing and I thought "I'm really happy right now! So this is what I've been missing, a social circle!". There are also many articles written about how having a good group of friends improves your health so much as you grow older.

Admiteddly we were sitting in a restaurant, where the food and drink cost money.

funkymike3• 7 years ago

Well money does significantly increase happiness, up to a point. The hard part as an individual is recognizing when you have hit that point. If you can realize it, then as your income grows you can avoid increasing spending which means you can save more and spend less years working. Working just to make and spend more money that doesn't substantially increase happiness.

bediger40004• 7 years ago

I've asked academic economists about this, albeit indirectly. I've asked if any studies of the effect of advertising have ever been made, if they've been replicated, etc etc. I tried to vary phrasing, and use the jargon.

I got a lot of "I don't know" and variants. It seems difficult to google up references, because the key words are common words.

FabHK9• 7 years ago

without advertising don't we have less jobs?

Yes, like we have less jobs without manufacturing chemical weapons.

without advertising don't we have seamingly greater dissatisfaction with lack of income?

I don't understand the question.

enlyth• 7 years ago

To me, it is worrying how much human effort we're investing into advertising as a whole. The top minds of our generations, backed by billions of dollars in funding, are working on increasingly manipulative ways to capture people's attention and use it to generate profit.

We're constantly getting better at it; who knows what path this will lead us down. I suspect it might not be the one we had wished for.

maerF0x0• 7 years ago

Here's the reason they keep doing-- It works. Stop rewarding it and they'll stop.

I actually think a large number of societal issues today are stemming from people's inability to think rationally for themselves. Things like fake news, being vulnerable to advertising, taking bad deals like minimum wage etc. If someone were able to think rationally and into the future to figure out, "4 years from now if I choose this [politician, car, job]" I'll be as bad or worse off, then those things would die out for want of funding...

worble• 7 years ago

You realise the reason why it's so effective is that it's psychological manipulation right? Telling people to just "stop rewarding" it is almost the same as telling abused partners to "just leave the relationship"; it's not that simple, and trying to reduce it as such is at best unhelpful, and at worst actively harmful.

xg152• 7 years ago

But this is the whole point - they are unable to think rationally because went invested billions of dollars in trying to find out how to undercut people's rationality. This is the whole idea of advertising and evidently, it works.

You might as well complain that water does not flow upwards.

silversconfused• 7 years ago

Preying on the weak is dishonorable.

Nasrudith4• 7 years ago

Given the vaugeness involved with advertising and attribuitation being something humans aren't too good at I wonder hypothetically how long it would take companies to realize that consumer advertisement effectiveness dropped to zero vs other economic causes.

JohnFen26• 7 years ago

Stop rewarding it and they'll stop.

Here's the thing...

I'd taken quite a lot of advertising courses during my education, and among the many truly scary things that I learned in them, one stood out above all others:

Knowing how advertising manipulates you, and even noticing it in the moment that it's happening, in no way makes it less effective. People who claim that they aren't affected by advertising are incorrect.

Nobody can just decide not to reward advertising, short of keeping a list of all the advertising you're exposed to (and are you sure you can spot it all?) and refusing to buy any product or service that appears on that list.

anigbrowl• 7 years ago

I actually think a large number of societal issues today are stemming from people's inability to think rationally for themselves.

I'm sure this has nothing to do with being bombarded with advertising from cradle to grave.

bobbygoodlatte• 7 years ago

This is good advice for an individual and relatively useless advice when given to society as a whole. Yes, people should think for themselves. If you have kids you might even be able to teach them how to think for themselves.

But at scale, at the level of a population, an expectation of individual rationality loses out to the realities of these manipulative techniques. On an individual level they might not work, but on a population level they tend to work.

If a population is being manipulated by political propaganda, then yes it's good advice to an individual to think critically / rationally. But that only affects change on the tiniest margin. The propagandists will still win overall.

geofft• 7 years ago

This is the "capitalism doesn't work because of human nature" argument (which I agree with). It is impossible to train people to pursue profit and to value consumption without these horrendous side effects. Meanwhile, it is quite clearly possible to train people to do worthwhile things with their lives without requiring them to chase a profit motive. (Examples include the free software movement, academic research, etc.)

jodrellblank5• 7 years ago

I actually think a large number of societal issues today are stemming from people's inability to think rationally for themselves.

Is this any different from the free market arguments about how regulation is bad, and the customer must inform themselves about literally everything and every consequence, with convenient disregard for the fact that it's impossible for a person to learn everything, and that it turns into a way to assign blame rather than to make the world a better place to live?

Why should "you must think for yourself" become a justification for you to be allowed to show advertising to me continually?

taking bad deals like minimum wage etc.

The only reason there are minimum wages, is because people fought for them, and refused to take even worse deals.

User232• 7 years ago

Here's the reason they keep doing-- It works. Stop rewarding it and they'll stop.

That's like saying stopping rape is easy, just don't reward it. It completely ignores the non-consensual nature of the interaction. Except advertising is even worse, because at least rape victims are aware they have been victimized, people that are manipulated by advertising don't even know it. In fact, if you ask, almost everyone will say "advertising doesn't work on me." If that were true, then why do companies spend billions on it?

rkagerer• 7 years ago

I've never clicked a Google link and bought something. I've never watched a Youtube ad and bought something.

I don't think they're making much money off me. They still keep advertising at me.

buck4roo• 7 years ago

Stop rewarding it and they'll stop.

Stop categorizing it as a tax-deductible business "expense".

It's not a requirement for doing business, and it should not be treated as such.

ardy422• 7 years ago

If someone were able to think rationally and into the future to figure out, "4 years from now if I choose this [politician, car, job]" I'll be as bad or worse off, then those things would die out for want of funding...

Literally no one can do that for everything. The world is too complicated and, depending on the area, there are either too many or too few choices available.

borkt• 7 years ago

I don't care how much education they have, the minds who are focused on developing ways to capture people's increasingly fractured attention are disqualified from being considered the top minds of our generation.

ACow_Adonis9• 7 years ago

honestly, its just a thinly veiled repetition of the American/boomer dad stereotype that money flow is the key arbiter of intelligence (even though I think at the higher end of intelligence its actually the opposite/ non correlated)

nothal• 7 years ago

I think that's a nearsighted appraisal of people in these industries. Advertising is effective and so is the myth that money gives you actualization, to me it makes perfect sense that smart kids are going into a high paying industry while missing it's harmful effect.

ngold• 7 years ago

And then the math geniuses that could be the next Einstein are slaving away in cubicles writing algorithms for the stock market. So much potential lost in the pursuit of increasing someone else's wallet.

solitus2• 7 years ago

And their own. These people are writing algorithms for the stock market because it pays incredibly well. Same for the engineers at FAANG selling ads online. Our society values money/material above all else and it's making us miserable.

Money is your score at the game of life.

briandear• 7 years ago

Who funds that “potential?” Markets have a purpose. Increasing one’s wallet drives innovation. Patriotism and superpower competition led to the space race, however the same people that claim to hate profits also condemn patriotism/nationalism that has led to innovations like manned space flight. The Soviets didn’t care about space because they saw a benefit to humankind, it was to beat the US in propaganda. Tesla couldn’t build cars without investment. Bell Labs wasn’t a benevolent non-profit. Henry Ford didn’t make an assembly line ought of altruism. Capital and profits drives innovation, like it or not. Even universities reward innovation with the “profit” of tenure or increased project funding. So yes, we need smart people “slaving away writing algorithms.” Some of those algorithms help with the efficient allocation of capital — capital necessary to build stuff you care about.

geowwy• 7 years ago

The stock market geniuses probably enjoy their work. I imagine it's exciting and pays well. Can't say the same about academic work.

tjpnz• 7 years ago

I would extend that to those working in tech.

gesman• 7 years ago

"backed by billions of dollars in funding" is the key to direct "much human effort" to pretty much any cause.

Only government [regulations] can change that - but above resources are certainly partially directed to make sure this won't happen.

Chathamization• 7 years ago

It seems like a larger and larger percentage of our economy is being taken up by parasitic sectors that have a net negative value for society. Advertising, soda, highly processed food, credit cards, car dealerships, (most) sales people, etc. We'd probably be better of as a society paying these people to do nothing than to do what they do now; we'd be even better off if we paid them to do something actually productive.

There's a lot of talk about what impact mass automation will have on our society, and what kind of work people will have once they're replaced by machines. This is always framed in such a way as if it's a problem we're about to face, but it looks like it's actually a trend that's been going on for decades (at least). And the answer is that, unless there is an effort to direct these people towards productive ends, many will continue to flow to these parasitic sectors.

foldingmoney7• 7 years ago

It's not like there's some central planning committee that sits down and decides what to pay everyone.

Citizens decide where to spend their money -- at least the part that the government doesn't tax and spend for them -- and all of these industries you name exist and pay well because people value them and choose to spend their money on them.

rexpop4• 7 years ago

You'd be smart to accuse me, here, of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, but the core parasite is Capital, which siphons value from the labor of mankind in a Byzantine labyrinth of social games meant to obscure this essential truth.

Mirioron9• 7 years ago

How are soda, highly processed food, and credit cards parasitic? They provide a service that people find very useful.

pzs• 7 years ago

Indeed, and economists seem to be a bit puzzled by this [1].

[1] https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/

InternetUser5• 7 years ago

Advertising, soda, highly processed food

Did you see this? -

Crossfit, Inc. Suspends Use Of Facebook And Associated Properties - May 23, 2019

https://www.crossfit.com/battles/crossfit-suspends-facebook-...

kortilla4• 7 years ago

Advertising, sales, dealerships, middlemen, and snake oil salesmen all existed long before the automation started.

You claim sales and advertising are parasitic, but what is the alternative? A central planning committee that decides what products we can buy?

chrisseaton7• 7 years ago

This is such a hugely snobby attitude.

The value of soda for example is that some people like the taste and sensation. It brings them a little bit of joy. Not everything has to be coldly utilitarian.

andrepd• 7 years ago

In a system where we (richly) reward people who buy and sell securities back and forth, or who manipulate people into wanting to buy mountains of crap (with lovely side effects such as the above post mentions), or produce clothing and food, transport them half the world, then set it on fire, when the system rewards these behaviours then of course this is exactly what will happen.

trevyn• 7 years ago

A good way to immunize yourself against something is to have weaponized it yourself in the past. Then you can recognize it when it appears, and you know its strengths and weaknesses.

The human vulnerabilities that advertising leverages are coded deep in the genome; building antibodies instead of avoiding the virus entirely could be wise indeed.

foobarqwertz• 7 years ago

dreams ads. see futurama.

InternetUser5• 7 years ago

Lol, we're already incredibly far down that path. Have you been using the same smartphone since 2008? I ask seriously: how many have you owned since then?

butteroverflow• 7 years ago

Well, if you want to use a smartphone, you pretty much have to buy a new one every few years. They don't exactly have great upgrade-ability, do they?

If course, it doesn't excuse all the Apple fanatics (among others) who go through one every single year.

I am still using a cheapo Asus from 2012. It was relatively powerful when it was released, but its performance drives me nuts nowadays. Thankfully, my smartphone needs are pretty modest, but I can see why a more "advanced" user wouldn't want to use such old hardware.

beecat2• 7 years ago

I can't second this strongly enough. Why are we utilizing such vast amounts of our limited resources to persuade people to make certain decisions? In my humble opinion it's usually because the decisions the people who employ advertising tactics want the people they are advertising to, to make, are suboptimal, if not downright bad, and people wouldn't make those decisions, but as a by-product of having been advertised to.

Quite frankly, advertising is psychic violence, and you can't escape it. Exploiting people's psychology to consolidate their resources for yourself is tantamount to theft. When men do it to women to push them to sell sex, we call it "pimping", and judge it as a completely reprehensible, unredeemable act. Of course your general well-being is diminished by a barrage of messaging encouraging you in every conceivable way, that the only road to satiety is to act against your own self-interest. How could that not totally fuck with you?

Spending your time coming up with more devious mechanisms, and ways to decrease the escapablity of said mechanisms is a fucking unseemly way to behave, as an individual. As a species, it's absolutely tragic that all those brilliant people doing it, can't break from the comfort of those fat paychecks and find something better to do with their time on Earth... Myself included.

titzer4• 7 years ago

Absolutely agree with the above and upvoted.

We all have to stop focusing on the short term quarterly profits and growth and zoom out and see the big picture. Not only is software eating the world, but it's appropriating it for a low kind of social programming--turning us all into zombies. Software wants to mediate all of our experiences as humans, and advertising is right there with it, trying to interpose to do, as you wrote, "psychic violence" in little drips throughout our daily lives.

It's amazing that we let our minds be run by the shit in computers. (including all of this! haha!)

challenger22• 7 years ago

Exploiting people's psychology to consolidate their resources for yourself is not tantamount to theft.

nullandvoid• 7 years ago

I get that advertising is a necessary evil but I've become numb to accepting any form of advertisements due to it being abused.

Ad block + refuse to watch pretty much anything on TV. Life is too short to lose +-10% of my leisure time being brainwashed over a product I don't care about

deogeo6• 7 years ago

necessary evil

Whatever convinced you it was necessary? A few cities/states banned billboards, and as far as I'm aware, the sky didn't fall.

chc5• 7 years ago

How many big content websites do you know that are doing well without ads?

seasoup• 7 years ago

I think they are missing the biggest issue with advertising, which is it incentivizes businesses to create things for the sole purpose of drawing their attention to the advertising. Truth is less important than shock value. Utility less important than appearance of utility. Extremist rhetoric gathers more eyeballs than moderate views. Advertising's biggest negative effects are in how it manipulates people into manipulating people's attention.

eswat• 7 years ago

It’s a colossal move but we have to move the marketplace away from the current growth capitalism towards one of real utility.

erentz• 7 years ago

While there are bigger changes we may need to make in terms of growth capitalism you refer to, for the simple subject at hand - advertising - there is a simple fix. Simply ban advertising in more places and ban more types of advertising. It's really not as heavy handed as it sounds. Bans on billboards in parts of the world show the way.

We can ban tracking of users. We can ban collection or sale or personal data. Things like this really aren't that crazy, it's how the world used to be up until a few years ago and the world still existed. Yes it might mean that some websites won't exist anymore. Other websites will be smaller and subscription based. Essentially your service will need to have some utility that at least a small portion of it's users will pay for. That's really not a big ask.

Draiken• 7 years ago

Isn't that impossible? I mean, capitalism is literally profits above everything else. Since evil marketing == profits, it will never change. It will only get worse.

ericdykstra3• 7 years ago

I take a little bit of issue with Truth is less important than shock value, which implies that news media is selling out their content for profit. The vast majority of news outlets don't make enough in ad revenue to stay afloat, and rely on outside funding. The news itself is the propaganda. Carlos Slim didn't put $250 million into the New York Times out of charity, he did it to buy influence.

nihalot• 7 years ago

So hasn't NYT sold out for profit?

oregontechninja2• 7 years ago

I view any and all non-obiective advertising as literally evil. There is absolutely no good reason for advertising to exist it's current state.

Are there any nations or states which outlaw or heavily regulate advertising? I've heard some governments outlaw advertising to children.

ACow_Adonis9• 7 years ago

well there's lots. in my country (Aus), there's regulations on tobacco, alcohol, gambling: each of varied levels of deliberate and actual effectiveness.

A lot of places limit billboards.

And then there's even cultural aspects: Melbourne culture says that the level of a places' 'coolness' is inversely related to its amount of external signage...

bediger40004• 7 years ago

I could not agree more. I have gone out of my way to teach my children that advertising is lies. Literally. That's what I told them, and demonstrated to them.

I also use uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, and NoScript in browsers I control, plus my own DNS-based advertising domain blocklist.

inetknght2• 7 years ago

If only lies were illegal

FabHK9• 7 years ago

Are there any nations or states which outlaw or heavily regulate advertising?

Well, in North Korea the only billboards I saw were of Kim Il-Song and Kim Jong-Il. The two restaurants in the hotel for foreigners on the island in the middle of Pyongyang were imaginatively called "Restaurant 1" and "Restaurant 2". So, not too much marketing there.

I do hope that there is some more sensible middle ground.

asdff11• 7 years ago

Sao Paulo banned advertising, removing 15k billboards in the process.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cidade_Limpa

perfunctory• 7 years ago

What can I say

"Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won't."

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fight_Club_(film)

kaybe3• 7 years ago

I'd say that's not true any more. We do have a war to fight, the war against destruction of our planet by humanity. (Hoping our politicians would fix it has turned out to be ineffective so far.)

If we could have a war against drugs or terror we can also have a war against climate change, soil degradation, desertification, insect decline and biodiversity loss.

fourthark• 7 years ago

What's a war without killing people?

InternetUser5• 7 years ago

So who's going to be the politician who can step forward and fight for those ideals without being bought out and thoroughly corrupted along the way? I hereby declare my endorsement for YOU, kaybe, to be that candidate! And with this push, I wish you the best of success between now and November of next year! https://i.imgur.com/7hvPycX.jpg

blueboo• 7 years ago

Our politicians are an expression of our political will.

People don't care (enough to vote)

mikelyons• 7 years ago

What nobody is willing to admit or even consider is that it is a spiritual war. Progress on this front cannot be made without the collective consciousness of humanity moving toward higher/greater awareness.

adamwong246• 7 years ago

Real luxury is being able to pay for the content you want, to watch how and when you want, without subsidizing the experience with attention-sucking ads. I refuse to hook up our cable box for this reason.

deogeo6• 7 years ago

Advertising is necessary to stave off the greatest threat against Western civilization: https://potterswealdotcom.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/fullsi...

RickJWagner• 7 years ago

This has been a problem since Mick Jagger sang about it, last century.

https://genius.com/The-rolling-stones-i-cant-get-no-satisfac...

lwb• 7 years ago

The biggest offender in my opinion is not the web, where you can install ad blockers and avoid certain websites, but television, where you're forced to sit through something before you can get to the content you're trying to watch.

I find it especially offensive on paid services like Hulu. I'm paying for the thing, just let me watch it!

It's also pretty bad for F2P mobile games, although the solution there is easy (play different games).

I actually don't mind advertisements in big cities or on billboards, sort of adds to the flashiness factor in some cases. Though if I lived in a more concentrated metro area I might feel differently.

JohnFen26• 7 years ago

The biggest offender in my opinion is not the web, where you can install ad blockers and avoid certain websites, but television

Yes, I agree with this. I gave up on television about 20 years ago, and it was the ads that pushed me that way. Every so often I'll see a TV program, and it's still intolerable -- things are so much worse than they were 20 years ago.

contingencies• 7 years ago

Two more media stories from the last 18 hours.

I visited a family member last night who pays for a commercial streaming service. They described an interesting TV program and tried to pull it up, but it had vanished. After using search function, it said "this content has expired".

This morning I woke up and the first thing my mother (who is literally dying of cancer and wanted to listen to a song on the way to hospital where she will receive medical attention for her terminal illness) said to me was that two years of her songs (she is part of an organized choir) have vanished because of iTunes, so she can't access her music in the car.

I for one am never buying another Apple product, use Linux nearly everywhere (despite the hassle) and try to help and educate others where possible. As a society, we have to stop trading long term freedom, stability and efficiency for short term convenience and planned obsolescence / landfill. Contribute to Wikimedia projects, use open source for media creation, and contribute to open culture.

mrep• 7 years ago

I find it especially offensive on paid services like Hulu.

What??? You can pay for ad-free hulu! Why are you complaining?

mayniac2• 7 years ago

Though if I lived in a more concentrated metro area I might feel differently.

I live in a metro area. Physical adverts are the worst type in my opinion. There are methods of eliminating every other type of ad: I use adblockers on my phone and computers, my network is pi-holed, I use plex/netflix instead of traditional TV, I pay for spotify instead of listening to the radio etc. But physical adverts? There's no way of blocking them, unless you consider "never going outside" an option. In a way, not having a method of opting out of billboards feels like they are being pushed on you without your consent, which is horrifying to me.

asdff11• 7 years ago

Physical adverts aren't nearly as intrusive and serve the interests of the locals at least. There's one right now in my town advertising addiction assistance, certainly not a bad thing. Then there's the electronic one they put downtown that is brighter than the sun and almost got me into an accident when it flashed stark white and blinded me.

ClassyJacket• 7 years ago

I find it especially offensive on paid services like Hulu. I'm paying for the thing, just let me watch it!

This is still better than what Netflix does, where they cram egregious product placement down your throat so you can't even just look away until it's over.

asdff11• 7 years ago

Cable TV used to be ad free when it first came out. The whole reason people were willing to pay for it was to not see ads like they got on the free broadcasts. Then once telecoms got their market share the ads trickled in, as was originally planned I'm sure.

mrhappyunhappy2• 7 years ago

I used to watch cable tv when it was ad free. Then ads came about and I was really baffled why anyone would pay to watch ads. That was the end of cable for me many many years ago.

Also, I’ll never forget the first day I saw and ad in the movie theatre. That was mostly the end of theatres for me except on some occasions.

anoncake12• 7 years ago

Easterlin (1974) found early evidence suggesting that society does not become happier as it grows richer.

This is why equality is important. A society becoming less equal is a problem, even if everyone gets richer.

sesteel5• 7 years ago

I view advertising as a form of pollution. In many cases, it erodes the human experience. It is abusive to families with children creating strife where there was none. I spend a lot of time managing expectations and sharing philosophical ideas, like "less is more". I don't mind teaching my children, but I don't like feeling people are trying to take advantage of us all the time. I explain it to them as if it is a game we're all playing, "if you keep your money you don't have to work forever." Another fun game I'd like to suggest is looking at an index fund calculator and see how much money you'd have if somebody had invested 1K (or $50 a month) in your name on your birthday. I use this as a means of giving them a plan; nobody had ever done it with me growing up, hopefully my kids are clued in on how to earn financial freedom. Now, I just hope my advice withstands the test of time.

cm201222• 7 years ago

The biggest driver of people wanting more is peer actions or non ad entertainment (people with fancy things in movies).

bribroder• 7 years ago

How did you think those fancy things got into the movies? Why were those peers seen performing those actions?

FabHK9• 7 years ago

So, here's a paper that explicitly discusses "Keeping up with the Joneses" and Veblen's conspicuous consumption and all, and that claims to show that more advertisement leads to less satisfaction.

You can't really just walk in and say "Well, no, guys, listen, let me tell you how it really is" and just dismiss the whole basic notion of the paper without giving sources.

quickthrower22• 7 years ago

It's good advice, but I find it ironic.

Keep your money. Stick it in an index fund. It'll get invested in Google, Facebook, Apple who make money from ... advertising their own or other people's products.

To really be minimalist I think it's better (if less lucrative on average) to start your own business that takes a small chunk of business away from the giants, that you have ethical control over.

It's getting harder to do that without needing help from Google, Facebook etc. though, and definitely hard to do without advertising. But there's simple advertising "Painter for hire" and then there is the manipulative advertising based on spying on people etc. I think they are two different things.

cm201222• 7 years ago

The content of targeted advertising is usually way less spammy than untarged advertising. More or less the only people who can make money on completely blind online ads are scammers (whiten your teeth! etc)

MichaelDickens• 7 years ago

An index fund invests in lots of companies. The ones that are driven by ad revenue only make up a fairly small percent of the fund.

sesteel5• 7 years ago

It is only ironic on a macro level. And, I think you extrapolated my thought out too far; I wasn't suggesting to never spend money. My concern is teaching two children how to manage their own consumption and to not spend money frivolously. We aren't at the point of asking 7 year olds to start businesses.

galfarragem• 7 years ago

Capitalism is fueled by consumerism. Even if some choose not to play the game (by consuming and producing only the strictly necessary) it's in their interest that others keep playing it.

davnicwil2• 7 years ago

On simple vs manipulative advertising being different things, I think mostly it's not the intent of the business advertising to be manipulative but rather just to save money. That is it's not the end that's bad, but the means.

Take our humble 'Painter for Hire' - an honest business looking to do real valuable work for people who genuinely want to pay for that service. That's the kind of advert we all want to see, when we need it.

To the painter, and perhaps even to the customer, it's just all round better if their straightforward advert can be targeted at people who are very likely to need the service, on demand. They can spend the same and reach some multiplier X more warm leads, or spend 1/X on the same amount of warm leads. Warm leads being people who genuinely need the service and are happy to pay for it. There's no real manipulation going on at that level - both advertiser and customer are basically better off for the targeting, with respect to that genuine painting service being facilitated more efficiently and therefore likely more cheaply.

The manipulation in this case is more at the level of the advertising platform itself - i.e. how is the targeting achieved (spying, etc), and what potential negative externalities might that have.

It's an open and interesting question if the ends justify the means in cases like this. I think I err towards saying they don't, but still at the end of the day the positives are undeniable. That is all basically a long winded way to say, I don't necessarily think it's a question of simple vs manipulative ads per se, I think the more important difference for the majority of ads is naive & expensive vs manipulative & cheap ad platforms, with a lot of tradeoffs in place between the two that are really hard to balance for both advertiser and customer.

sonnyblarney2• 7 years ago

Weirdly 'keeping your money' might be bad for the economy!

Your spending is someone else's income.

It's sounds a little nutty to say you're depriving someone else but it's kind of true.

If you see products and or services you like and they have some value to you - and you can reasonably afford - it's good to spend in many ways.

InternetUser5• 7 years ago

I think it's better (if less lucrative on average) to start your own business that takes a small chunk of business away from the giants, that you have ethical control over.

Ok, what's your business? I'll gladly check it out! I'm open-minded, love new ideas, and admire integrity and good founding principles!

undershirt3• 7 years ago

A game indeed. Our investments only grow as a direct exploit of the very “pollution” we try to avoid. As debt increases exponentially, so must consumption to cover it. So we shield ourselves and invest—because the game has winners, and it has losers.

tim3333• 7 years ago

People would still spend money and companies still grow even if you banned advertising. I still quite like having housing, good food, travel and so on even if I haven't seen adverts for those recently.

crispinb5• 7 years ago

I view advertising as a form of pollution

Quite. If (which is now for obvious reasons somewhat unlikely) our global civilisation manque struggles on for another century, it will look back on the overconsumption propaganda industry very much like we now see slavery. Ogilvy, Saatchi et al are the Goebbels' of our age.

undershirt3• 7 years ago

I would drink with you

air7• 7 years ago

Ogilvy, Saatchi et al are the Goebbels' of our age.

Sorry, but that is waaay over the top. It makes you sound a bit nutty. A "Truther" of sorts, that dangerously believes too profoundly in his own ideology.

d1zzy• 7 years ago

If everyone just "keeps their money" the amount of cash changing hands would be much reduced which has a big negative impact on the US market (for better or worse). It's why everyone's monitoring "consumer confidence index".

I moved to the US from a society where for almost any service or product, if there was a realistic option for the consumer to do their own thing and avoid spending money they would most definitely do so (even if that meant doing a worse job, wasting a lot of time on it). In the US I was surprised by the opposite attitude, if one affords to pay some money to avoid putting in the work they'll do it (and many times even when they don't have the cash for it and have to get credit). There are advantages and disadvantages for both approaches I don't think it's a clear win.

JohnFen26• 7 years ago

I moved to the US from a society where for almost any service or product, if there was a realistic option for the consumer to do their own thing and avoid spending money they would most definitely do so

I'm in the US, and this is the predominant attitude amongst my friends and family -- so it's not unheard of here.

maxaf• 7 years ago

I spend no time managing expectations because my child isn’t exposed to advertising. There is no TV or social media in our household, and no ads thanks to multiple overlapping ad blocking solutions. There’s advertising outside, but it’s easy to ignore, and usually contains messages relating to things my daughter has no baseline for. For example, she doesn’t care about some billboard advertising a TV show because... you guessed it: there is no TV!

Popular culture in 2019 is worth opting out of. It brings no value, erodes humanity, and pollutes our minds. “And nothing of value was lost.”

ellius• 7 years ago

I tried to think of a counterargument to this and drew an almost total blank. There have been some great works of art over say the last 20 years or so—"Breaking Bad," "The Sopranos," and the like—but it's almost completely trash. I can't name more than a half-dozen things I'd have missed if I had thrown out my television and deleted Facebook etc.

sesteel5• 7 years ago

This brings up an interesting topic for discussion. I think there are several modes of parenting: hands off, protective, preparatory, etc. I think most parents try to balance these. I've taken the view that for most situations I want to prepare my children for the world they will face given what I know today, be hands off to see how they react, and only protect them as a last resort. While, some kids simply aren't ready to handle the problems they face on a daily basis, mine seem to understand more than you'd think they would. I could see how removing these stimuli from the beginning might be a good idea when you know it is going to be a problem or you want to create a peaceful environment, but I'd really prefer them to make that choice, not I.

shrimp_emoji• 7 years ago

Compared to when, the '90s to '00s?

At least rap's woke now. Back then, it encouraged criminal behavior and discrimination[0]. D:

That said, I think I turned out okay.

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIeSGUK-Lyo&feature=youtu.be...

Iv• 7 years ago

I'd like to add that advertising is also economic pollution that goes against free competition.

The theory behind free markets requires that voters are more or less rational and well informed. That they will never spend more on an inferior product. Advertisement distorts that.

I suspect that banning advertisement altogether would make the economy gain a lot in terms of market efficiency. Can you imagine a world where pricing and quality would be highly correlated? A world where information on a product would be, if not correct, at least made in good faith?

I'd love to see that happen.

krustyburger• 7 years ago

Where would you draw the line? How would producers expect for consumers to find their product?

Would consumers be allowed to recommend products to each other?

What about design and product packaging? Isn't that essentially a form of advertising?

snaky• 7 years ago

Mises in Human Action (p. 19) writes "Human action is necessarily always rational. The term 'rational action' is therefore pleonastic and must be rejected as such. When applied to the ultimate ends of action, the terms rational and irrational are inappropriate and meaningless. The ultimate end of action is always the satisfaction of some desires of the acting man."

https://mises.org/library/what-do-austrians-mean-rational

The rational being practicing rational-expectations theory only makes behavioral economists laugh. And the neoclassical construct of equilibrium prices requires assumptions that only tenured professors who don't get out much could believe, like perfect competition, perfect information, and perfect rationality.

https://mises.org/library/rationality-and-market-economy

munchbunny• 7 years ago

I'd love to see an efficient market too, but banning advertising won't accomplish that, it'll just shift the burden of discovery elsewhere, like review aggregators, and information there is already questionably reliable.

In practice, I think the problem that creates advertising is that humans have limited bandwidth for ingesting information in general, so we have tons of tools to compile more information into less information, such as news, books, statistics, reviews, etc. (For example, how many people really entirely understand their health insurance plans? It's not for lack of trying.) Advertising is sort of an arbitrage of that communication bandwidth based on the fact that some actors (companies) really want you to see their information more badly than others.

That problem doesn't go away just because you ban advertising, it just moves the arbitrage opportunity elsewhere.

asdff11• 7 years ago

I don't know if you can ever fix that. Here's a complaint about someone being cheated on a sale, 4000 years ago (1). Probably long before the ad men appeared, but people have always been looking for their angle.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nasir

reshie2• 7 years ago

and it doesn't have to be but i do agree. jingles were a form of advertising and were kind of fun and had the phycological effect of getting stuck in your head. there were/are also quite entertaining commercials but still give visibility to their products tv and streaming. perhaps its the medium. of course we still have the equivalents to a infomercial on the internet though.

panarky• 7 years ago

a form of pollution

I'm reading Edward Bernays' 1928 book Propaganda [0]. Bernays was an advertising and public-relations guy who wanted to rehabilitate the term "propaganda" and rid it of its negative connotations.

Ultimately, advertising, public relations and propaganda are about agitating and motivating people to do things that they wouldn't ordinarily do, and Bernays believes it's all for the benefit of the public.

Crucially, Bernays argues that it's not so much about the ad you see, it's about the social cues that have been engineered into your family, education, employment and political system that predispose how you consume.

Turning off the TV and Instagram are good starts, but I wonder what media you and your children consume that is immune to the methods of Bernays and those who followed him.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_(book)

vertline3• 7 years ago

There is a documentary from BBC about the history of philosophy of happiness that was on YouTube, in the documentary it is mentioned that the Greek Philosphers had discussed advertising as lowering our happiness in order to replace the hole with their product. I think it was epicurus but I am not certain. the narrator is Alain de Botton

hristov• 7 years ago

There is a very underrated old movie called Roger Dodger, where the main character is an advertising executive. He said something to the effect that his job was to convince people that their lives were shit. Only after you convince them that their lives are shit you can then convince them that the new product is the very thing they need to fix their lives.

codeulike• 7 years ago

When I lived in London, I often wondered what it would be like if the adverts that covered the underground and streets were replaced by pictures drawn by children.

inetknght2• 7 years ago

That actually sounds like a pretty damn awesome suggestion.

asdff11• 7 years ago

Print some out and put them up on top!

return17• 7 years ago

Ironically, advertising your position against advertising is also a form of advertising. I dont think it's right to view advertising as inherently unethical. Communication and signaling are parts of human nature

FabHK9• 7 years ago

Rape and murder are parts of human nature, too. Still inherently unethical.

return17• 7 years ago

you think communicating with you is unethical?

jasonhansel• 7 years ago

I really want a study to show what percentage of online ads are downright deceptive (or at least highly misleading). I suspect it's well over 60-70%.

noir_lord• 7 years ago

One of the nicest things about been a techie is I rarely see/hear adverts.

I don’t listen to the radio (programming podcasts and music), watch broadcast tv (streaming and..other sources), ublock origin deals with the web.

So I see maybe a one or two per day (billboards near work).

I’m reminded how nice that is every time I touch a windows work PC that isn’t mine (I run fedora on a box I built myself), at least everyone is running ublock origin now after I suggested it.

hindsightbias• 7 years ago

The perfect VR app would be a visual ad blocker. IEMs have taken care of my ears (at least until iTunes or audible have ads).

asdff11• 7 years ago

Plenty of people are probably chomping at the bit to get AR ads rolling . I can't wait for the youtube ads to pause and wait for my eyes to re center on them before they continue.

okr2• 7 years ago

I remember developing an App. And then we have talked about, how can we be seen. And then all my grudges on advertising disappeared. Thank god, that it exists.

layoutIfNeeded• 7 years ago

Probably your app is not that special then.

You know: build it, and they’ll come.*

* If it’s worth it.

okr2• 7 years ago

Maybe. Or the market is big.

cm201222• 7 years ago

Definitely not. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20034730.

50656E6973• 7 years ago

Big Advertising is a root cause not only for mass mental dissatisfaction, but also mass health epidemics (i.e. obesity in the US), and ecological destruction/climate change.

cwkoss6• 7 years ago

Advertising is a cancer on our society. Every time you see an ad, make an effort to to make that impression net-negative ROI. Tweet about how the brand causes horrible health problems, makes customers look like idiots, has disgusting business practices etc. Who care's if it's true, most ads (or tweets for that matter) are not either!

Nursie• 7 years ago

I think there's (at least) another factor not investigated here - advertising as a stress inducing, unnecessary noise in life.

People are trying to bombard you, through every possible avenue, with advertising. They want your eyes and your mind and they won't waste a second or a flat surface when trying to get at them.

I find it abusive and exhausting.

xfitm32• 7 years ago

Advertisers are also the "moral police" and strong arm media companies into compounding the short and long term toxic effects of their original message.

bediger40004• 7 years ago

That's only true in very extreme cases of "original message", and advertisers only act if there's demonstrable proof that a large percentage of the audience of the toxic message will bail out on their particular product.

xfitm32• 7 years ago

Youtube proves otherwise.

40acres• 7 years ago

I assume brand advertising to be specific is the real culprit here. As a huge fan of Mad Men some of Don Draper's (main character) quotes are illuminatung here.

"Advertising is based on one thing, happiness. And you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It's freedom from fear. It's a billboard on the side of the road that screams reassurance that whatever you are doing is okay. You are okay."

FabHK9• 7 years ago

The financial industry was huge (it reached 8% of US GDP, and 40% of corporate profits [1]), sucked up many bright students, and made many of its practitioners rich, while arguably not creating much value.

It really seems to me that the same holds, more and more, for advertisement (Google, Facebook). (Well, banks created the ATM, as Volcker famously remarked, and Google a better search engine, so there's that.)

[1] https://www.fa-mag.com/news/how-finance-took-over-the-econom...

clairity• 7 years ago

i agree with your sentiment about the finance industry, but an economist would argue that it did create value through greater monetary velocity (which is basically buying more stuff).

but to take your points further... when the limits of tangible goods constrained by population, like housing and food, are reached, a voracious economy must move to less bounded products like (access to) money itself to continue growing. similarly, advertising created monetary velocity out of access to attention, an intangible industry relatively untapped until the 20th century unlocked it.

the long-term approach to aligning the value created by these industries with our collective expectations is of course to change the metrics by which they're evaluated, but that will take decades (just as doctrines like trickle-down economics that got us here took decades to take root). lots of people here have noted that it's not bad to find out about products you're interested in, but what we don't like is having our attention wasted on things we don't care about in an effort to manipulate us into buying things we don't really need (by exploiting information asymmetries about the value of those products).

in the meantime, we have to continue having this discussion and putting our money where our mouths are.

amelius3• 7 years ago

I suspect the root of the problem is with the way we view our economy. Instead of measuring happiness we use e.g. GDP as a metric, but I wouldn't be surprised if a high GDP correlates with and causes unhappiness and on top of that it certainly also negatively impacts the environment.

Also, capitalism/the free market seems like a very unfair system (no need to provide examples I hope), and unfairness is also a known cause of unhappiness.

But meanwhile, instead of addressing these problems, our brightest minds are trying to make people click more ads ...

tim3333• 7 years ago

Well there are some people trying to measure happiness now eg https://worldhappiness.report/ and there seems a trend in that direction, may it continue.

bigbadgoose• 7 years ago

"Advertising exists to make you feel bad about yourself, then inserts product as solution"

mlinksva• 7 years ago

I don't see a link or reference to it, but I guess this is a slightly condensed version of https://andrewoswald.com/docs/AdvertisingMicheletal2019Easte...

Tax ads!

Added: actually it's in the reference list as:

Michel C, M Sovinsky, E Proto, A J Oswald (forthcoming), "Advertising as a Major Source of Human Dissatisfaction: Cross-National Evidence on One Million Europeans", to be published in 2019 in a volume in honor of Richard Easterlin.

makecheck• 7 years ago

Imagine having a person constantly walking too-close next to you, picking just the wrong time to JUMP IN FRONT OF YOU before every little thing you try to do, and shouting in your face and refusing to go away until they can finish what they were going to say. This is what modern advertising does, for everything! It isn’t exactly surprising that this could be a net negative for pretty much everyone.

cfarm• 7 years ago

It would also be interesting compare if a consumer could pay for a product without advertising vs having a product for "free" with advertising, does this finding still hold true?

l33tbro• 7 years ago

I hate to be the typical HN contrarian, but I actually love advertising. I think its messaging and visual language is unparalelled in its ability to succinctly depict the modern values and behavioural norms of our societues.

If you take an 'observe not absorb' approach, advertising can be extremely insightful of where the needle has moved or is moving.

phkahler2• 7 years ago

"They Live" should be classic shown in every 5th grade classroom.

clevep2• 7 years ago

This article misses by far the number one benefit of advertising: it makes products and services cheaper.

That notion obviously applies to the plethora of "free" (free in quotes because I am not trying to dodge the fact that you are always paying something) websites which everyone frequents, but goes beyond that as well.

There's a comment on here complaining about how Hulu shows ads despite the fact that they are paying for the service. Well, you can pay more and not see those ads, but you have made a conscious decision to pay less for the service, so you get to pay some of your attention instead.

Back to the article -- it claims that "a hypothetical doubling of advertising expenditure would result in a 3% drop in life satisfaction." What I would like to see is some analysis of how much life satisfaction is earned back if all relevant products become proportionately cheaper. Then we would be in position to figure out what the sweet spot for society is using a price:advertising ratio as a slider.

That would be very interesting and result in a more productive conversation.

ACow_Adonis9• 7 years ago

this talking point just doesn't die, and that's not how economics or profit maximising agencies work. It also fails to explain why, over time, advertising encroached on almost all platforms unless actively resisted and why it's so difficult to find a genuinely ad free service.

in short, these platforms work to maximise profit. ads serve to form another income stream, and as long as they don't push sufficient numbers of customers away, it's always in the short term interest of the provider to expand advertising income until the marginal gain equals the marginal loss in marginal revenue from the consumer base.

In most mediums and content/ subject matters, this is at a non-zero level of advertising, especially if everyone else is already advertising.

while advertising does really result in free services (if you do not account for negatives of advertising or assume all increases in consumption generate positive utility), it is not generally the case for most consumers that advertising results in cheaper products, or that you could pay 5% more and be rid of ads.

clevep2• 7 years ago

Hah, perhaps I was not clear enough in my original comment because I agree with everything you wrote after the first paragraph.

I strongly agree with this sentence: "in short, these platforms work to maximise profit. ads serve to form another income stream, and as long as they don't push sufficient numbers of customers away, it's always in the short term interest of the provider to expand advertising income until the marginal gain equals the marginal loss in marginal revenue from the consumer base."

That is 100% accurate. However, that doesn't mean that ads do not affect the price of goods and services.

Businesses are always looking to find the sweet spot to maximize profits by pulling on different levers. These levers could represent price increases, advertising, lowering production costs, etc. Businesses will always be looking for the most efficient lever to pull. And I guarantee you that if you somehow figure out how to take the advertising lever away, they will pull a different lever. This could result in a higher price, a lower quality product, or something else, but ultimately something has to give.

This explains why advertising is likely to encroach on all platforms, because as users become more accustomed to it there is a higher likelihood that it is the most efficient lever to pull.

And of course I agree that it is generally not the case that you could pay 5% more to be rid of ads. The Hulu example was just a good illustration of how to think about the relative value of advertising to Hulu / the consumer.

SomeOldThrow• 7 years ago

What I would like to see is some analysis of how much life satisfaction is earned back if all relevant products become proportionately cheaper.

There’s a reason services refuse to offer paid plans: people would realize how much the functionality of these services are destroyed in service of showing ads—you can see a tiny fraction of this reaction with the hulu anecdote. It’s also at the core of our “screen addiction”: imagine the savings in mental health care alone if ads disappeared....

nine_k• 7 years ago

That is, the services don't become cheaper in total, but their cost structure changes. A part of voluntary paying is replaced by a part of involuntary seeing, and the feeling that you are letting go some valuables is blunted.

User232• 7 years ago

Advertising is inherently predatory. I'm well aware of the arguments like "we're providing customers with useful information about things they might like to buy," but that's a lie. It's using propaganda and persuasion techniques that were discovered in the early 20th century and have been increasingly perfected. And that's just the first order effect. The higher order effects of advertising are even more pernicious. Advertising has destroyed far more lives than guns ever have. That's not hyperbole, the opioid epidemic is the result of predatory advertising and lobbying by pharmaceutical companies such as Purdue Pharma.

walrus01• 7 years ago

I wish that there were some easy way to integrate the general philosophical concept of ublock origin into the rest of my life, outside a web browser.

andrei_says_• 7 years ago

Why would people buy anything if they are content?

Combine this with the need for constant growth encoded in management incentives and the push to remove content from everyone is pretty powerful.

deepakkarki2• 7 years ago

Folks in this thread may find this interesting, a 4 part documentary on Edward Bernays and the history of advertising and PR as we know it today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04

From the video description -

"The story of the relationship between Sigmund Freud and his American nephew, Edward Bernays. Bernays invented the public relations profession in the 1920s and was the first person to take Freud's ideas to manipulate the masses. He showed American corporations how they could make people want things they didn't need by systematically linking mass-produced goods to their unconscious desires.

Bernays was one of the main architects of the modern techniques of mass-consumer persuasion, using every trick in the book, from celebrity endorsement and outrageous PR stunts, to eroticising the motorcar.

His most notorious coup was breaking the taboo on women smoking by persuading them that cigarettes were a symbol of independence and freedom. But Bernays was convinced that this was more than just a way of selling consumer goods. It was a new political idea of how to control the masses. By satisfying the inner irrational desires that his uncle had identified, people could be made happy and thus docile.

It was the start of the all-consuming self which has come to dominate today's world."

HNLurker2• 7 years ago

Fun fact: Bernays grandson is the co founder of Netflix. And you may think what brainwashing are all of these memes by Netflix? (Stephen Bernays Randolph his father)

anewhnaccount2• 7 years ago

Wow. And I suppose they managed to eroticise Netflix itself via "Netflix and chill". Pretty brazen stuff when you think about it.

raxxorrax3• 7 years ago

Netflix content mostly feels empty and shallow, so it seems to not be working correctly. Or maybe they were aiming for this cheap TV ambiance.

Or it is working perfectly, since I have a subscription (for now).

analog312• 7 years ago

>> He showed American corporations how they could make people want things they didn't need by systematically linking mass-produced goods to their unconscious desires.

I sometimes wonder if the people who are the true targets of advertising, made to want things they don't need, are the people who buy advertising.

coldtea2• 7 years ago

Those people can also do A/B tests, and compare various methods of advertising. And they get their money's worth on customers (e.g. a promotional vlog by an a-lister can suddenly push millions worth of product). So probably not.

otabdeveloper12• 7 years ago

Advertising hasn't been about 'persuasion' or psychology for a long, long time.

Advertising today is mechanical applications of the central limit theorem / law of large numbers to sociological problems.

raxxorrax3• 7 years ago

Is that for reach and penetration and whom to target? Wouldn't know how I would apply that to ads.

flycaliguy• 7 years ago

Can somebody point me to further reading on this subject please? Specifically in advertising.

3xblah2• 7 years ago

"PR" was invented by the military. I learned this from someone in PR who was trained in the service during WWII and then went on to work in the "public relations profession" as a civilian. I suspect the military trained Bernays. He may have invented the "profession", but he did not invent PR.

mushbino• 7 years ago

Bernays started Public Relations as an occupation + name in the private sector. In the military it was known as propaganda.

dalore2• 7 years ago

"PR" was invented by the military.

That's a bold claim, with your only supporting evidence some anecdotal claim by some guy you knew who claimed it.

If you are refuting the article and making your own bold claim, surely you can offer more evidence then "some guy I know told me"

gnoppa• 7 years ago

Is watching this documentary still useful after having read Bernays' Propaganda?

deepakkarki2• 7 years ago

I haven't read Propaganda so can't answer your question, but I do think you should watch the first part and see if it adds anything new. The documentary is not much about his work as it is about him and the impact of his work - it's a level meta. So might be worth it.

slavaukraini• 7 years ago

Wow it's crazy to think the world wasn't always like this... and I guess it's even crazier that you can't really imagine a world without adverts using things like celebrity endorsements. It's insane how much effect seemingly minor things can have on society.

coldtea2• 7 years ago

Well, a constant barrage of promotional messages, playing with people's feelings, taking advantage of psychology, hurting their self-worth to hook them (buy these clothes to be like those beautiful people, fat? you need this product, buy this gadget and enter the lifestyle of the persons using it in the ad), embedded covertly in TV, movies, celebrities and openly in tv, billboards, print, webpages, video games, mobile apps, flyers, posters, and so on, is not exactly "minor".

We see hundreds of ads every day. Even if we miss each particular product placement, their aggregated core message "buy more stuff" and "your life is not perfect like the people in the ads" registers just fine.

lars512• 7 years ago

If there's big negative externalities to advertising, wouldn't you ideally tax it and use the funds for initiatives to improve subjective well-being?

bcherny• 7 years ago

I read over the page twice, and didn’t see an actual study linked. Does someone have a link to the PDF? And was this actually published in a peer reviewed journal?

ehmish• 7 years ago

I've wondered if the reason governments haven't passed legislation taxing or otherwise outlawing advertising is that they rely on advertising companies to get elected (election advertising)

hi41• 7 years ago

Our economy is dependent on advertising so that revenue increases every quarter. Any curtailing of advertising would also have a impact on revenue and then result in job loses. We need to arrive at solutions that is able to reduce such impact on individuals and families.

wow425• 7 years ago

Root of the problem is measuing everything in GDP.Natural resources such as rivers and oceans, topsoil and forests, the ozone layer and the atmosphere, are seen as essentially valueless—unless, of course, they are exploited and converted into revenue. Gdp measures mainly market transactions. it ignores social costs, environmental impacts and income inequality. Seen through such a lens, the most economically productive people are cancer patients in the midst of getting a divorce. healthy people in happy marriages, in contrast, are economically invisible, and all the more so if they cook at home, walk to work, grow food in a home garden, and don’t smoke

Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence

Related Stories