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Did you actually have a need for those products before hearing about them? I find myself very often in the situation were I hear/learn about a new cool thing,

Did you actually have a need for those products before hearing about them? I find myself very often in the situation were I hear/learn about a new cool thing, and I want it absolutely right now (The last example was a colleague bringing an Oculus to work, I almost ordered one the spot) However, I try to wait a bit before actually buying anything big (like one/two weeks), and I find that most of the time I don't actually need/care about the product I was so hyped about. This is one of the part that annoy me the most about advertising, especially if it is well targeted : It creates a new need and offers (sells) its solution, more than it helps me to fulfill a real need.

eevilspock 11y ago
"Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need." "We're consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don't concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy's name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra." – Tyler Durden, Fight Club (Swap out a few of the products in the second quote for gadgets, cars and porn to make it better fit the HN demographic.)
rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
The century-old foundation for modern consumerism is that people are irrational actors who are primarily motivated by base instincts like fear, lust, hunger, and so on. If you haven't seen the BBC documentary "Century of the Self," I highly recommend it.
thenomad 11y ago
Depends what you mean by "need". If you mean "your business or life had a critical problem that could only be fixed by this tool", then no. If you mean "your business or life could be significantly impacted and improved by this tool", then yes. I almost never impulse-buy, FYI.
xixi77 11y ago
I don't think "real" and "new" are opposites -- if someone only realizes that she wants X after hearing about X, why does it make her need any less real?
fluidcruft 11y ago
> Did you actually have a need for those products before hearing about them? Yes. As a mater of fact, a prime example from earlier this week--I live in an area with very active clays and we've had a serious drought this year which has shifted foundations around like crazy--whatever, that's what active clays do and you learn to live with it. But the annoying part is doors that stick or won't close or closets that won't open. So, I fixed a few last weekend by putting spacers behind hinges and moved some strike plates around and was getting ready to learn how to plane the doors that couldn't be fixed that way and for the first time and I saw an advertisement for an "adjustable door hinge". Whoa. best. idea. ever. Test batch is in the mail and I have high hopes. Why on earth these things aren't stocked in the local Lowe's or Home Depot is beyond my comprehension.
- eevilspock 11y ago
  Ran into? That's not an argument for ads. That's an argument for serendipity. We don't need ads for chance encounters of things that might be useful. You run across them when you visit someone's house, or a friend tells you about something great, or someone here on HN mentions it. Or maybe you do a web search and it comes up as a recommended alternative to planing doors. All of these are better than ads because the source does not have a conflict of interest, an incentive to deceive. And we can move away from a web, roadsides, subway cars, buses, everything littered with ads. We can have a web and newspapers or television news that don't put out junk to increase page-views or tv views using any means necessary (e.g. click bait, sensationalistic junk "news" "reports", etc). We won't have children being programmed to want more and more stuff. I could go on and on.
  - hagbardgroup 11y ago
    Yes, we can. Private roads have no ads. Expensive neighborhoods have no ads. You won't see many ads on Park Avenue in Manhattan. Expensive HOAs ban lawn signs. You can pay extra for the ad-free Kindle from Amazon. If you buy books, the books are ad-free. Expensive newsletters are ad-free. Pay per view movies are ad-free (except when they have products inserted surreptitiously into the content on behalf of advertisers). Are you seeing the pattern, here? You get to pick two from this set: cheap, good, fast. If it's cheap and fast, it'll be bad. If it's good and cheap, it'll take a long time. If it's fast and good, it won't be cheap. Plenty of people -- the majority, really -- want lower prices in return for submitting to brain-scrambling.

eevilspock 11y ago

"Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need." "We're consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don't concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy's name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra." – Tyler Durden, Fight Club (Swap out a few of the products in the second quote for gadgets, cars and porn to make it better fit the HN demographic.)

rm_-rf_slash 11y ago

The century-old foundation for modern consumerism is that people are irrational actors who are primarily motivated by base instincts like fear, lust, hunger, and so on. If you haven't seen the BBC documentary "Century of the Self," I highly recommend it.

thenomad 11y ago

Depends what you mean by "need". If you mean "your business or life had a critical problem that could only be fixed by this tool", then no. If you mean "your business or life could be significantly impacted and improved by this tool", then yes. I almost never impulse-buy, FYI.

xixi77 11y ago

I don't think "real" and "new" are opposites -- if someone only realizes that she wants X after hearing about X, why does it make her need any less real?

fluidcruft 11y ago

> Did you actually have a need for those products before hearing about them? Yes. As a mater of fact, a prime example from earlier this week--I live in an area with very active clays and we've had a serious drought this year which has shifted foundations around like crazy--whatever, that's what active clays do and you learn to live with it. But the annoying part is doors that stick or won't close or closets that won't open. So, I fixed a few last weekend by putting spacers behind hinges and moved some strike plates around and was getting ready to learn how to plane the doors that couldn't be fixed that way and for the first time and I saw an advertisement for an "adjustable door hinge". Whoa. best. idea. ever. Test batch is in the mail and I have high hopes. Why on earth these things aren't stocked in the local Lowe's or Home Depot is beyond my comprehension.

eevilspock 11y ago
Ran into? That's not an argument for ads. That's an argument for serendipity. We don't need ads for chance encounters of things that might be useful. You run across them when you visit someone's house, or a friend tells you about something great, or someone here on HN mentions it. Or maybe you do a web search and it comes up as a recommended alternative to planing doors. All of these are better than ads because the source does not have a conflict of interest, an incentive to deceive. And we can move away from a web, roadsides, subway cars, buses, everything littered with ads. We can have a web and newspapers or television news that don't put out junk to increase page-views or tv views using any means necessary (e.g. click bait, sensationalistic junk "news" "reports", etc). We won't have children being programmed to want more and more stuff. I could go on and on.
- hagbardgroup 11y ago
  Yes, we can. Private roads have no ads. Expensive neighborhoods have no ads. You won't see many ads on Park Avenue in Manhattan. Expensive HOAs ban lawn signs. You can pay extra for the ad-free Kindle from Amazon. If you buy books, the books are ad-free. Expensive newsletters are ad-free. Pay per view movies are ad-free (except when they have products inserted surreptitiously into the content on behalf of advertisers). Are you seeing the pattern, here? You get to pick two from this set: cheap, good, fast. If it's cheap and fast, it'll be bad. If it's good and cheap, it'll take a long time. If it's fast and good, it won't be cheap. Plenty of people -- the majority, really -- want lower prices in return for submitting to brain-scrambling.