[Mechanical9]

There's a necessity in society for some form of advertising. People and businesses want to communicate what products and services are available. If a random person wants the ability to start their own business, they're going to need the ability to advertise that they have a new product that they want people to try. Or they want to advertise that there's some societal issue that they want people to be aware of.

Consider a world with zero ads. There wouldn't be annoying interruptions. But we also wouldn't ever learn which new movies are playing, which political candidates are running, etc, except from 2nd and 3rd hand sources with several layers of spin (and misunderstanding/misinformation) on the information.

I personally hate the current state of direct advertising. There seems to be zero prevention of fraud and zero work towards making ads less annoying. I wish that consensual forms of media could convey all that information instead, in an unbiased, informed, and timely manner. Unfortunately that isn't currently happening for several reasons (media underfunding, editorial conflicts of interest, personalized content streams that preclude any sort of unexpected news).

I'm not sure what the solution is overall. I think if every company didn't deliver absolute buckets of trash to their own email marketing lists, then we wouldn't block them and they wouldn't have to pay to ruin our other media.

[flir]

> Consider a world with zero ads. There wouldn't be annoying interruptions. But we also wouldn't ever learn which new movies are playing

Pull, not push. If I want to know once I'll look it up. If I want to be reminded regularly I'll subscribe to their new movie feed.

[jackthetab]

Non-flamebait question: But how do you know to look it up in the first place? Word of mouth from friends or reviewers, i.e. influencers?

Unless we're defining "ads" to mean "interstitial video|aural ads", then I'll concede the point.

[flir]

You mean how do I find cinemas that are local to me? (Or streaming services, I guess). Again, pull. Search engines. Various categories of information broker.

What I'm pushing back against is the idea that advertising is necessary for society to function. I'm defining advertising in the broadest sense I can for the purposes of the thought experiment - information that you pay to have put in front of people. It can be entirely replaced by information that I pay to access.

It always will exist of course, because the incentives of a seller aren't aligned with mine, but it isn't necessary.

[thfuran]

I'm not sure what you mean. Are you asking how someone who has never heard of the idea of a movie will find out what movie releases are upcoming? Is that really the sort of outlier we want to structure our society around?

[vel0city]

Most of the movies I've seen were because of a poster hung someplace or a trailer playing before a movie at the theater or something sparked an interest in seeing it. Movie posters hanging on the wall are a form of advertising. If we didn't allow movie posters to be hung or trailers to be played I would have not known about a lot of movies I've enjoyed over the years.

[thfuran]

Are you sure you wouldn't have? If you knew you like watching movies and knew that the way to find out what movies were coming out was to ask rather than have them plastered all over everything, would you really never have done so?

[vel0city]

I definitely would have missed a ton of movies that I just would have never known existed.

Since having kids, I don't go to movie theaters very often. Since I don't go to theaters, I don't see the displays hyping new movies, I don't see the posters there, I don't see the trailers. I don't watch regular TV so I don't get many ads. If you were to ask me for 5 sci-fi movies that came out recently several years ago, I'd be able to easily tell you some that I at least wanted to see, if I hadn't already seen them. These days? I couldn't tell you two in the last two years. I still like movies, I'm just no longer passively surrounded by movie-info, so I don't get any of that info.

And so yeah, I'm absolutely certain I've so far missed out on many movies that I probably would have enjoyed, I just never knew they existed, largely because I haven't been exposed to any advertising of those movies. Movies that I would have known about, had I been subjected to ads for them.

I'm currently living in that world of needing to pull up the cinema's website to know what movies are out there, and I absolutely know far less about movies I'd like to see. Because I'm not going to just pull up the cinema's website every few days to see what movies are currently out there just to see "nope nothing I'm interested in", its a lot easier when the information comes to me.

I fully agree, not all advertising is good, a lot is actively harmful! But at the same time, advertising can be useful, even as the consumer.

[tomjen3]

If I want to know what movies are playing, I can ask the cinema. This is far more effective for the both of us.

If I want to know who is running for election, this is similarily available.

As for social issues? Being able to afford to make noise has proven a drastically inferior barrier than I need.

[vel0city]

If I only know about what movies are coming out is by asking the cinema, I'm probably going to miss out on a lot of movies I'll probably enjoy, unless I make quite the habit of asking the cinema on a very regular basis.

[tomjen3]

I don’t know why you think that would be the case, I am interested in history so I get the news letter from the local museum.

[vel0city]

So you're subscribed to their marketing letter, aka getting their ads. Still a "push" action. That's fine and I think that's good advertising.

And I think that's the case because that's my life experience, today. I know far less about movies playing at the theater because I'm at the theater less for other reasons. I don't see all the trailers and posters and displays for upcoming movies, I don't get that information thrown at me anymore, so I don't know any of it.

I didn't used to have to try to find movies I'd like. Now I do. Why? Because I consume fewer ads.

[tomjen3]

I am getting their news letter. I don't consider that ads, but news, since it is spots that are first party and not sold.

[edgyquant]

>There's a necessity in society for some form of advertising

Objectively false

[gdulli]

The best concert I ever saw (Nightmares on Wax) was one I only knew was going to be in town from a TV commercial. I don't follow concert news.

I realized recently that I only ever see blockbuster movies anymore because I've hardcore eliminated advertising from my life. I don't know what movies are coming out anymore if they're not huge and mainstream. That's kind of a bummer. Movie trailers were one kind of commercial I did like.

Advertising mostly sucks, yes, but like all takes you can be too extremist about it. Sometimes an advertiser's interests align with mine. Maybe I should know the full range of products and services available. I'm not going to forget that the advertiser's message is biased.

By blocking all advertising from my life I've introduced a different kind of bias into my choices.

[vel0city]

Almost all concerts I've gone to without a friend taking me was because I heard about the concert on the radio.

[edgyquant]

Nevertheless, that doesn’t make them a necessity