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Do you volunteer to be the one to inform business owners and small art house cinema operators that they're now forbidden to engage in any marketing of their goo

by mbrock 9y ago

Do you volunteer to be the one to inform business owners and small art house cinema operators that they're now forbidden to engage in any marketing of their goods and services, and all the media that the majority of their revenue is now illegal? This is a completely unrealistic fantasy unless you want to provoke a large scale uprising.

cousin_it 9y ago
I'm in favor of a more creeping push. For example, banning roadside billboards is a great idea, every city that's done it is happy with the results. (I've lived in a city where every major road was lined with billboards, ugh.) Or banning cigarette ads - in fact it's a boon to cigarette companies, because it curtails the spending arms race but doesn't shrink the market (the buyers are addicted anyway). Or blocking popups and popovers - if implemented consistently, it would help small businesses a lot, because they wouldn't have to plaster their website with crap to stay competitive.
- mbrock 9y ago
  Sounds reasonable, but in the context of the need for an urgent screeching halt to avoid global disaster, such legislation has only a slim chance of passing in the most "enlightened" districts, so it seems kind of useless to talk about. I may seem pessimistic and indeed I am. But like other people do their part by encouraging people to consume less, I try to do my pathetic part by telling them to stop wasting time on hopeless utopian ideas.
coldtea 9y ago
>Do you volunteer to be the one to inform business owners and small art house cinema operators that they're now forbidden to engage in any marketing of their goods and services, and all the media that the majority of their revenue is now illegal? Actually, small business owners and small art house cinema operators would (or should) be delighted from such a change -- it means the films they play could get as much marketing revenue (0) as the blockbusters now advertised all across town. This would TURN people towards the more quirky, smaller scale and generally the less able to advertise today, not the opposite...
- mbrock 9y ago
  Depends on how you define advertising. It's fundamentally impossible to have a market without marketing. The cinema gets its audience by posting events on Facebook, and that's advertising, right?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - coldtea 9y ago
    >The cinema gets its audience by posting events on Facebook, and that's advertising, right? No, that's just posting their events on their own channel that people have to subscribe to to see. But even if we classify that as advertising we can still allow that -- we're inventive, as humans -- without still not allowing for 90% of what today is used for advertising.
    - mbrock 9y ago
      When you ban that 90%, all that desire and energy and capital will sink into the other channels, and the outcome will be nothing like you wanted, just like banning drugs is nothing at all like deleting drugs from society.
      - coldtea 9y ago
        Aside from drugs and alcohol, which are addictive, it has worked wonders for tons of other things...

by mbrock 9y ago

cousin_it 9y ago

I'm in favor of a more creeping push. For example, banning roadside billboards is a great idea, every city that's done it is happy with the results. (I've lived in a city where every major road was lined with billboards, ugh.) Or banning cigarette ads - in fact it's a boon to cigarette companies, because it curtails the spending arms race but doesn't shrink the market (the buyers are addicted anyway). Or blocking popups and popovers - if implemented consistently, it would help small businesses a lot, because they wouldn't have to plaster their website with crap to stay competitive.

mbrock 9y ago
Sounds reasonable, but in the context of the need for an urgent screeching halt to avoid global disaster, such legislation has only a slim chance of passing in the most "enlightened" districts, so it seems kind of useless to talk about. I may seem pessimistic and indeed I am. But like other people do their part by encouraging people to consume less, I try to do my pathetic part by telling them to stop wasting time on hopeless utopian ideas.

coldtea 9y ago

>Do you volunteer to be the one to inform business owners and small art house cinema operators that they're now forbidden to engage in any marketing of their goods and services, and all the media that the majority of their revenue is now illegal? Actually, small business owners and small art house cinema operators would (or should) be delighted from such a change -- it means the films they play could get as much marketing revenue (0) as the blockbusters now advertised all across town. This would TURN people towards the more quirky, smaller scale and generally the less able to advertise today, not the opposite...

mbrock 9y ago
Depends on how you define advertising. It's fundamentally impossible to have a market without marketing. The cinema gets its audience by posting events on Facebook, and that's advertising, right?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- coldtea 9y ago
  >The cinema gets its audience by posting events on Facebook, and that's advertising, right? No, that's just posting their events on their own channel that people have to subscribe to to see. But even if we classify that as advertising we can still allow that -- we're inventive, as humans -- without still not allowing for 90% of what today is used for advertising.
  - mbrock 9y ago
    When you ban that 90%, all that desire and energy and capital will sink into the other channels, and the outcome will be nothing like you wanted, just like banning drugs is nothing at all like deleting drugs from society.
    - coldtea 9y ago
      Aside from drugs and alcohol, which are addictive, it has worked wonders for tons of other things...