politics

This year, companies worldwide are expected to spend 1.08 trillion U.S. dollars on advertising. But the amount of value lost to humanity is about double that. Here is why: advertising actually works. Companies gain at least as much from it as they spend on it, or they wouldn't do it. Advertising works by manipulating people to make objectively bad decisions. To buy stuff they don't need or buy stuff at elevated prices keeping up monopoly like pricing. How much useless stuff? How much higher prices? Well at least another $1.08 trillion worth of course, or companies would spend less on advertising. Basically people need to work to make the ad, that makes you buy useless shit and then people need to work to make the superfluous product and/or to afford an overpriced one.

And this is just advertising, not general marketing, branding and public relations. People like to think, that ads are just annoying or that they work on everyone else but them, but the truth is, they work on all of us and cost us a lot of money. Not to mention the often cited ideological effects of making us feel unhappy, inadequate, fearful, sad, sexualized, pressed into gender norms and social classes and so on.

So the material loss to humanity is about $2,160,000,000,000 this year. Poverty, hunger, climate change, take your pick - oh wait, with this kind of money you wouldn't have to choose, just end them all and still have a lot left over. An alien race looking on earth from the outside might be amazed at how we spend so much energy, time and effort, just to dull our own minds.

From a Marxist perspective, advertising is driven by the capitalists urge to avoid what they hate most (at least in their own sector, not necessarily for their suppliers): fair competition. By manipulating demand with advertising, they get closer to monopoly prices. That's why, we can't realistically hope to get rid of advertising within capitalism. It's part of the ideological manifestation of the tendency of capital to form monopolies.

Le sigh.... so much I want to say. But it would be borderline self doxxing.

I've been to places, very metropolitan places, where advertising is all but nonexistent. And it was amazing. Startling at first, but then mind blowing when you realize the harmony in the absence of treat propaganda.

I literally think about it every day.

I vandalize ads. Including billboards. Be the change you want to see

Sometimes they give up and stop posting them. Its extremely easy to do. Paintball guns (incl shooting ball bearings at a LCD billboard), aerosol cans, a pocket knife.... its trivial!

Install ublock on your browser. Stop watching TV straight from the hose. I have made it so that any area I can walk to or interact with has no ads.

If everyone who hated ads vandalized them they would no longer exist.

Advertisements are detrimental to mental health. There should be studies to measure the amount of advertising hours the average person is exposed to in a day, and regulations to limit this amount. Websites like Youtube and Facebook should stop showing ads to a user after they've hit their quota, and there should be stricter regulations to limit the amount of advertising shown to minors.

Companies like Google and Microsoft should be limited in what percentage of their revenue is from advertising. Ad revenue has warped these companies, every update Microsoft releases for Windows is focused on adding more features to trick the user into searching for something with Bing. All the money they're burning with their Copilot AI, is just in the hopes that a few more people will use Bing instead of Google. After a company makes a certain amount of money from advertising, all future profits should be donated to a charity or refunded to the users.

We should also get rid of billboards. They are distracting to drivers and make roads less safe. The only public advertising allowed should be, if your band is playing nearby, you can put some posters up.

tear down all the billboards and replace media ads with remedial 6th grade educational material

I've been saying this for awhile but most people I talk to act like I'm crazy

Please liberate my brain from the liberty mutual commercials, I beg you.

Propaganda is advertising for the state,

lost me here. bad definition

Sorry, my future communism includes constant drilling in all media about the successful elimination of imperialism globally as opposed to the prior horrors of imperialism, and the fact that employing others in private companies is tantamount to slavery morally.

PLEASE

People love advertising. Advertising itself is more addictive than the products it advertises.

Friends call me crazy when I watch TV with them and am like "yooo what a sick ad! omg let's goooo" I'm so hyped about this shit, because I ron't see ads in my own spaces. When it cones to television they interest me more than the actual content. Ads are like sugar, fast food, a cigarette, or a slop blockbuster movie. You want to get dumb. You want it to get into your brain.

It's belletristic and from I think... 2000something? "99 francs" is the original title. There's a book and a movie too. It's pretty whacky but I found it to be very enjoyable, it portrays the sheer insanity of the ad industry from the inside and the outside.

Sorry I'm still a bit ill, got the flu and my brain has turned into mush over the last few days. Glad hexbear is back I missed you so much

edit: brain broke

DO IT!

Counterpoint: those cool soda signs that say "coca cola served here" or w/e can stay because i likr them

yea what if