[em-bee]

the work that pays is the unglamorous stuff that needs doing

no, the work that pays is the unglamorous stuff that someone wants to get done to make a profit. the stuff that actually needs doing is the stuff that would be a benefit for our society.

[nostrademons]

"Profit" is just the difference between what people are willing to pay for a service and the full cost of what it takes to provide that service (which itself is defined as how much the different suppliers could be making doing other stuff). Business owners are rewarded for shifting resources away from activities that consumers don't value highly (as evidenced by their willingness to pay for them) to ones that they do. If you feel that businesses are focusing on the wrong things, spend your money differently.

[wharvle]

Blaming consumers for the modern advertising industry is like blaming Soviet factory workers for bread lines.

[nostrademons]

Blame is counterproductive. The world simply is the way it is, but it is helpful to have a realistic picture of why, and then you can make local modifications that might at least make your own life a bit nicer.

In advertising's case, it's such a huge industry because it works. It moves the needle on purchasers' decisions. You can make it work a little less well on yourself with a few mental habits: never buy on impulse, don't save your credit cards, put time and distance between yourself and the purchase decision, have a rigorous self-directed research process before you open your wallet, learn to skip or tune out ads, go for paid media instead of ad-supported media, etc. And you can make it work for you by taking the other side of trade and getting paid when other people click on ads. But there are 8B+ humans who you don't control, and they will do what they want to do.

[wharvle]

> Business owners are rewarded for shifting resources away from activities that consumers don't value highly (as evidenced by their willingness to pay for them) to ones that they do. If you feel that businesses are focusing on the wrong things, spend your money differently.

So... that's not blame? Is "businesses only do this because you tell them to, with money, so stop telling them to if you don't like it" not the intended reading of that?

My point is that the modern advertising industry is better classed as a result of large-scale structures and societal-scale rules, the same way bread lines were, than as something explained by consumer choice. I mean, FFS, the point of it is to influence consumer choice. This is like saying if the gas pedal doesn't want the car to go faster, it should stop getting pushed so much.

[nostrademons]

It's consequences, not blame. There's no value judgment in saying "If you do this, it will result in these consequences." You can make your own judgment about which set of consequences you prefer.

"My point is that the modern advertising industry is better classed as a result of large-scale structures and societal-scale rules"

Does this model result in useful predictions that you can act upon? A model that "advertising works because in the aggregate, it alters buying decisions and leads to more spending being directed to the advertiser" is very actionable: it tells you exactly where the money is, why it is being spent, and then gives you leads to areas you might want to study (eg. human psychology and perception, owning a channel, producing content at scale) to make you better at influencing those money flows. A model that "the modern advertising industry is better classed as a result of large-scale structures and societal-scale rules" may be true, but it's pretty useless. It doesn't have enough detail to make specific predictions, and its area of focus is on phenomena that you don't have any agency over anyway.

My physics professors were always very clear that the true value of a theory is "Can you make testable predictions with it?" My English & sociology professors were always very clear that "Society doesn't actually exist. It's just a collection of individual actors." This was pretty eye-opening when I got to college, because it got me to understand the value of thinking in terms of specifics rather grand theories that sound expansive as a soundbite but can't actually be used.

[em-bee]

i can with good conscience say that i am doing all of what you suggest. no impulse, do research, skip and une out ads. except for the paid media to avoid ads. i use adblockers for that.

but i struggle with that other side. i'd love to earn some money on sidebusinesses like that, but i feel like making them ad supported would be close to unethical. i want people to stop paying attention to ads, not take advantage of them.

[nostrademons]

Not everybody wants the same things. Giving them what they want so you get what you want makes both of you better off.

[em-bee]

if i allow ads on my website, i am not giving people what they want, but i exploit their naivete to make them buy what they don't actually need or want.

i probably can't even control what ads will be running, so how would i know if those ads are something i would approve of or not?

[em-bee]

my budget for meaningless entertainment is zero, so i am spending my money differently.

[wharvle]

Right, the key reason this line stings so bad is precisely that 99.9% of money and effort spent on advertising is capitalism-friction. It's waste-energy. It's escalating zero-sum games. It emphatically does not need doing. It's an accident.

[EDIT] And that's the optimistic take. In fact a great deal of it is harmful, not just wasteful.