Man, some people really think they're entitled to dictate how the world must be. The argument that easy access to product information online eliminates any con

Man, some people really think they're entitled to dictate how the world must be. The argument that easy access to product information online eliminates any consumer benefit of advertising misses a key point. I only do research online for products that I care deeply about. I am never going to bother to seek out information online to figure out what kind of laundry detergent to buy. It's just way, way down on my priority list. So I'm perfectly happy to passively consume the advertising and let that shape my decisions, for the 20 seconds of thought I give this topic as I walk through that aisle in the grocery store. What information does advertising convey to me, as a rational consumer? 1) How successful the company is [inferred from how much money they seem to be spending on advertising]. 2) What characteristics they think matter the most - price? Stain removal? Efficiency? Sometimes a company will emphasize something I don't care about - which lets me know I'm probably not the target market for their product, and I should look elsewhere. 3) Whether they have any new products I haven't tried. I once tried a detergent brand I had never heard of - Persil - because I saw a TV ad for it. Probably somewhere out there there's a laundry detergent enthusiast forum that already knew about it, and they have strong opinions about Persil, and debate whether it was reformulated in 2016, or whether's it's really the same in the US vs. Germany. I don't know, because I don't care! But I liked the smell and I'd buy it again. Conversely, advertising for cars is totally ineffective on me, because I'm a car nut and I know about every model coming out 2 years before they would ever be advertised in any medium. But, there are plenty of people in the world who think about cars in the same way I think about laundry detergent - and might go to the Honda dealer and check out a minivan because of the ad they saw that showed it had a built-in vacuum cleaner in the trunk. I've mentioned on HN before that I bought a Casper mattress largely because of the incessant ads for it on my favorite podcasts, which I heard long before I actually needed one. Without those ads, when the time came, I probably would've just driven to the mattress store and tried out what they had in stock. It never would've occurred to me to search the web to see if someone had revolutionized the mattress business - this was a chore, I wanted it over as soon as possible, and I didn't want to spend my mental energy doing research on fucking mattresses. But because of the ads, I knew that there was an established company that had come up with what they claimed was a better product in this space. I checked out a few reviews to make sure people actually liked the mattress - then I ordered one, it showed up in 3 days, and I love it! Thanks, advertising.