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> None of that money goes to the people who are being abused daily by the onslaught of mental pollution that this "industry" produces. Why should it? They're t

> None of that money goes to the people who are being abused daily by the onslaught of mental pollution that this "industry" produces. Why should it? They're the ones consuming the free content. They get to view whatever content they're looking at, for free. You watch a funny cat video on youtube, that's your "reward". That's the product you're buying with your time. I don't know why people feel so entitled to free stuff. They forget that the content they're viewing is subsidized by ads. It's only free because of ads. Here's a question; Would you sit through a 60 second commercial to watch a completely brand new episode of Game of Thrones that no one has seen yet? If not, then switch Game of Thrones to whatever your favorite TV show is. Is the answer now yes? Ok, good. Now why should the advertiser also pay you to view the ad? Your "payment" is getting to watch game of thrones. The people who created game of thrones should the one's getting paid by the advertiser, not you. Now I know not all content is "good" and worth your time viewing ads, but that's a matter of subjectivity and not really worth discussing. Everyone has different tastes when it comes to content. What matters is the fact that content is subsidized ads. For whatever reason, this is an extremely hard concept for many people to grasp. As a content creator myself, it's extremely frustrating.

lotsoflumens 11y ago
I understand your frustration! Everyone wants to believe that what they create has value and that people should pay something to enjoy it. But we can't escape the reality that the world is being changed dramatically by technology and that the concept of "cost gravity" is unstoppable. Pieter Hintjens has a very good essay on this at http://cultureandempire.com http://cultureandempire.com This is what we're seeing with adblocking - the technology to control which information is allowed to enter our brains is now available to everyone. Your brain is your most valuable organ, and it is highly susceptible to persuasion and influence through positive and negative images, greed, fear and jealousy. All of these can be, and are, manipulated by advertisers for their benefit. It has always been an arms race. In the "good old days", when everyone watched TV in the evening with their family, advertising was probably necessary to support the content. Then after a few years the ads got louder (the volume was actually increased) so that people would pay attention during the commercial breaks. People discovered that their remote controls had a mute button, and then they had some welcome silence between movie episodes. Commercial breaks started to get longer and people discovered that they could record everything and fast-forward through the commercial breaks, saving much valuable time. A president of the MPAA (Jack Valenti I think) actually said that it should be illegal to skip through the advertising when viewing time-shifted video because that deprived the broadcaster of the revenue to which they were entitled. Even movie theaters, where the assumption was that you could watch the movie since you paid for admission, started to show advertising at the beginning. At first it was just a couple of quick minutes before the feature, but that soon became many more minutes and now is at about 30 minutes (advertising thinly disguised as games and quizzes). My simple proposal is that this downward spiral can be stopped, if advertisers accept that people want to control what they see and hear in an increasingly noisy world, and that this is both legitimate and necessary. Regarding your question about why an advertiser should also pay me to watch an ad in addition to a Game of Thrones episode: Because, if they paid me, I would listen to their pitch. That's much more valuable than blindly displaying ads with the hope that 0.1% or less of the ad recipients would pay any attention.

lotsoflumens 11y ago

I understand your frustration! Everyone wants to believe that what they create has value and that people should pay something to enjoy it. But we can't escape the reality that the world is being changed dramatically by technology and that the concept of "cost gravity" is unstoppable. Pieter Hintjens has a very good essay on this at http://cultureandempire.com http://cultureandempire.com This is what we're seeing with adblocking - the technology to control which information is allowed to enter our brains is now available to everyone. Your brain is your most valuable organ, and it is highly susceptible to persuasion and influence through positive and negative images, greed, fear and jealousy. All of these can be, and are, manipulated by advertisers for their benefit. It has always been an arms race. In the "good old days", when everyone watched TV in the evening with their family, advertising was probably necessary to support the content. Then after a few years the ads got louder (the volume was actually increased) so that people would pay attention during the commercial breaks. People discovered that their remote controls had a mute button, and then they had some welcome silence between movie episodes. Commercial breaks started to get longer and people discovered that they could record everything and fast-forward through the commercial breaks, saving much valuable time. A president of the MPAA (Jack Valenti I think) actually said that it should be illegal to skip through the advertising when viewing time-shifted video because that deprived the broadcaster of the revenue to which they were entitled. Even movie theaters, where the assumption was that you could watch the movie since you paid for admission, started to show advertising at the beginning. At first it was just a couple of quick minutes before the feature, but that soon became many more minutes and now is at about 30 minutes (advertising thinly disguised as games and quizzes). My simple proposal is that this downward spiral can be stopped, if advertisers accept that people want to control what they see and hear in an increasingly noisy world, and that this is both legitimate and necessary. Regarding your question about why an advertiser should also pay me to watch an ad in addition to a Game of Thrones episode: Because, if they paid me, I would listen to their pitch. That's much more valuable than blindly displaying ads with the hope that 0.1% or less of the ad recipients would pay any attention.