Advertising Is a Cancer on Society
...Real world advertising is not about informing, it's about convincing. Over time, it became increasingly manipulative and dishonest. It also became more effective. In the process, it grew to consume a significant amount of resources of every company on the planet. It infected every communication medium in existence, both digital and analog. ...
-- @temporal
@dredmorbius @temporal
Great article.. very comprehensive. But he did miss one point:
* #advertising is an arms race. A supplier may not want to spend money on ads, but is forced when a competitor does so.
@dredmorbius @resist1984 @temporal it very much reminds me of this excellent piece on the "race to the bottom" nature of it all: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
@resist1984 @dredmorbius @temporal I believe there's a lot more to take away from the essay than just the old tragedy of the commons. It's a matter of survival and extinction.
@resist1984 @dredmorbius I did not miss that. It's one of the core points. However, you're like a third person to say that point is not there, which means I failed at communicating it. I'll reword things to make it more explicit. Thank you!
@resist1984 Right: Red Queen's race.
There's a great book written at the dawn of the modern advertising age, short, fact-filled, highly readable, by Hamilton Holt, called "Commercialism and Journalism" (1909).
It lays out virtually all the current complaints (though misses political manipulation). Highly recommended.
https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holtuoft
@temporal