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by ToucanLoucan
493 days ago
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I wish I could up this far more than once. Instead of “sustainable” waste, how about just do without ads? Everyone hates them, their effectiveness is murky at the absolute best, and even non-emissive ones are intrusive and obnoxious. We don’t need these things anymore, if I want a new gadget, or lunch, or whatever, I don’t look out at fucking billboards, I pull out my phone and google for nearby businesses or for the gadget I’m after. Public space ads were a shit solution for product discoverability when they were invented, and today they’re completely fucking irrelevant. Most ad tech is to be honest, it’s just an entire industry built of people and companies pretending it’s 1955. |
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The mere-exposure effect (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere-exposure_effect>) is all that is needed.
If ads were "completely fucking irrelevant" then companies wouldn't be spending the large amounts of money that they do on it. I agree that ads are a nuisance, but they're not going to be easy to simply get rid of, as long as money is involved. And considering how tightly coupled finance is with policy nowadays, I find it highly unlikely legislators would pass bills banning public advertisements. Especially when sometimes the government itself is the one getting paid to promote goods and services.
Finally, the issue is also defining what constitutes an advertisement. How do you draw the line between advertisement and free speech? If, theoretically, a very passionate citizen, enjoyed a product so much that they simply wanted to publicly express their satisfaction with it, posted a sign of that expression, does that constitute an advertisement?
If it does, and gets removed, then I'm afraid that's no different than some dystopian form of censorship.
If it doesn't, then it would be trivial for companies to continue advertising, because then every ad could just be re-framed to be the personal expression of an individual.