Excellent blog post. You mention several things that we are so used to, that we don't even notice the abuse, such as the polluting of culture by association of works of art with commercial brands through relentless advertising. To this day, I associate Carmina Burana with cheap male cologne.
Another one for you: in Berlin, buildings under renovation are allowed to place gigantic ads on the scaffolding. I imagine the original ideas was benign, to sort of subsidize the loss of revenue by business owners and renters, and thus encourage maintenance for the good of the city. Of course, there is nothing that marketers won't try to pervert, and this is an easy one. In the most desirable advertising locations, buildings tend to enter states of perma-renovation. This got particularly horrible during the last Word Cup, with historical buildings in my area covered with gigantic ads with tacky things written on them in gigantic letters, such as : GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL! BUY THE NEW XYZ VR HEADSET
What depresses me to no end is how apathetic everyone is to this relentless erosion of culture and quality of life.
I've heard opinions that something similar is happening in my country too (Poland), and it would explain some strategically placed buildings in Kraków that can never seem to finish being renovated, and that also happen to feature ridiculously large ads on the scaffolding.
> I remember reading about cases of scientific papers that were advertisements pretending to be research work. I'll update this point when I find some actual examples.
Not exactly the same but related: soda manufacturers have been stressing the correlation between inactivity and diabetes, and in the process sliding in the message that sugar intake is not that big of a factor. That messaging goes with ads of healthy people in movement enjoying life and drinking sugar water.
Advertising companies also act as censors. If some advertiser takes issue with something, it will be deleted. Therefore, every community ends up being sanitized so as to avoid offending advertisers and their policies. I've seen site administrators purge their own community after Google turned off their ads because someone complained about one page.
Another one for you: in Berlin, buildings under renovation are allowed to place gigantic ads on the scaffolding. I imagine the original ideas was benign, to sort of subsidize the loss of revenue by business owners and renters, and thus encourage maintenance for the good of the city. Of course, there is nothing that marketers won't try to pervert, and this is an easy one. In the most desirable advertising locations, buildings tend to enter states of perma-renovation. This got particularly horrible during the last Word Cup, with historical buildings in my area covered with gigantic ads with tacky things written on them in gigantic letters, such as : GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL! BUY THE NEW XYZ VR HEADSET
What depresses me to no end is how apathetic everyone is to this relentless erosion of culture and quality of life.