[Firmwarrior]

Hey, do you have a good way to communicate this to normies?

I haven't had any luck explaining to my wife that advertisements are basically a sort of cancerous meme designed to deliver misinformation and manipulate you into wasting your money on products that focus more on self-promotion than quality or value. I just sound like a jerk and she somehow takes it as a personal attack

[kelnos]

I sometimes have trouble explaining this to others without coming off as a jerk as well.

I think the thing to do is to focus on yourself rather than the person you're talking to: instead of saying to someone that ads are "designed to manipulate you", say that they're "designed to manipulate, and I know that I'm not always strong enough to resist being swayed to want to buy something I don't actually want or need".

Frame it as ads making you, personally, feel manipulated. Don't try to proselytize and tell people that they're being manipulated, because no one likes to be told that they're gullible and weak. So focus on how ads affect you, not on how you believe they affect the person you're trying to convince. Because even if you're right about how it affects them -- and you probably are -- it doesn't feel good to be told that.

[harry8]

The really nasty side of advertising is the collateral damage of mental health issues, eg death by the torture of annorexia is just one. I find it's usually pretty easy to get some kind of agreement on that even if we agree we are not suceptible at the moment and how making the audience of the ads feel inadequate (so we spend money on something to feel better) is the point. Perfume advertised by perfet movie stars and models who are better and happier than you. It doesn't have to be a conspiracy, as a society we've thrown every ad strategy against the wall and selected for the ones that work and this one works so we use it, don't know or care it harms a vulnerable 12 year old. Ad exec doing lines off the boardroom table may not even be smart enough to abuse your children deliberately but _can_ copy this other thing that worked. "No fat women in coke ads." Needn't be a malicious agency or "obesity vendor" policy for it to actually be put into effect and be happening. (It could be policy too, who would trust them not to be vile?)

So that's the obvious end and you can see pretty easily how it exists all the way up the spectrum from the extremely serious effects through to the utterly "well thats 30 seconds I'm never getting back" level of trivial.

The advertising industry has no regard for you or your family's or your community's mental health. None. This is clear to me and you can form your own view. Given I believe that, we have to run defence. And you do, I do, everyone does. "Kids, that is fake, that isn't real." If you never had a discussion like that with younger humans, be they your kids, extended family, friends or randoms then, I kind of wonder why not? How much defence should we be playing against it all? As much as we can is my answer. It's wrong not to make some kind of effort.

Where are you drawing the line for the health and welfare of your family?

[MereInterest]

Depending on how the particular crowd, I sometimes describe it in D&D terms. I know that I took WIS as a dump stat, so why would I put myself in a position where I need to make a WIS saving throw against their CHA?

[noasaservice]

Cause there's a lot of bards here, and with 'pretty songs' it's easy to make yourself sound amazing...... Until the song wears off.

[brokenmachine]

I've been a lot happier since completely removing mainstream news from my life, and everything I use has adblocking. I don't see any ads on my devices.

[engineer_22]

Some people will see the world differently than you do, no matter what you say. You'll learn to live with it.

[i_am_proteus]

This is very hard and I wish I had a good answer, but all I can do is commiserate, really.

Most of the time when I try to float the idea that advertising is making someone sad so that they make purchases, that person tells me about the Great Products they discovered through instagram.

[brokenmachine]

100% agree about the cancerous meme thing but you also need to be tactful, read the room, and let people have their fun. We'll all be dead soon anyway.

[amelius]

Tell her that ads are designed to make people buy stuff, and this causes overconsumption which is bad for the planet.

[Andrex]

It's already too late for her. Better to focus on educating the next generation, honestly.