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Man Against Marketing
- krysp 5y agoThe point about escalators in subways being designed for marketing exposure resonates with me. More and more I walk around and see advertisements everywhere; they seem to be becoming inescapable in our modern cities. I block them on my devices, but I can't remove them from my vision.
- apples_oranges 5y agoFor me it was one of the most interesting things about my visit to Cuba. No ads! (except for the never ending revolution)
- dalbasal 5y agoA thought just occurred to me. In ancient civilizations as in Cuba, there's a state (church, pharaoh, etc) monopoly on marketing. All the power now dispersed to sneaker sellers, political lobbyists and SEOs was concentrated. "Everyone should believe, want or object to X" was an achievable goal. That may be what made pyramids possible. Cornerstone of civilization.
- LatteLazy 5y agoWhen Google glass was a thing, I thought the killer app for me would be a real life ad blocker.
- apples_oranges 5y agoYes, same here. Perhaps the Apple glasses would do the trick? (if they indeed come..)
- dalbasal 5y agoThey might block ads, but they'll also blur out nudity.
- thejackgoode 5y agoImagine taking off glasses being considered creepy
- dalbasal 5y agoor saucy.
- busymom0 5y agoThey might only allow content to be visible which had been approved by the App Store review team :)
- kwhitefoot 5y agoThose who are easily offended could subscribe to a service that would clothe everyone decently. Then the rest of us could dress as we please.
- ZiiS 5y agoI wonder what the killer app for Google was.
- nathias 5y agohttps://www.irl-labs.co/ https://www.irl-labs.co/
- thomasjbevan 5y agoThere is more than a hint of ‘They Live’ about the whole thing.
- swiley 5y agoThat's interesting. There are ads in the subways here but not around the escalators (including the escalator at Roslyn which is fantastically tall and always freaks me out when I'm on it.) Or if there are I've gotten extremely good at tuning them out.
- PeterBarrett 5y agoThis is so nicely written, good job. It's a topic that captivates me every couple of months, most recently I've been interested in the power of YouTube's recommendation system. If you show interest in a topic you're slowly guided into more videos on the topic, to the point where you're more likely to buy items surrounding the topic you have become interested in. Then eventually the recommendations change, your interest in that topic weans and you're on to your next interest. It's a cycle that's easy to fall into and easy to break if you notice, but how many people don't notice?
- rorykoehler 5y agoYouTube recommendations are awful. I watch one video out of curiosity and am then flooded with similar videos. There is no nuance just a deluge of shit. Even stuff I am interested in is annoying to see day in day out. It pares the world down into a few niches in turn stopping you from discovering new and interesting things outside of what you already know.
- ehnto 5y agoDo you mostly watch videos from people you already subscribe to? YouTube behaves the same way for me, and I am wondering if it's just a perception thing. If I watch an MTB video, it's mostly MTB recommendations, but they're all people I am subscribed to so it's not notable. But if I watch a video about metalworking, it probably shows the same kind of spread just for a topic and channels I'm not familiar with, making it feel like it's lost it's way. I also wonder if they don't weight subscriptions that highly for the recommendations, and because I mostly watch subscriptions, if I watch a new topic it's heavily weighted because there's not much other data.
- rorykoehler 5y agoYes I do and I also think this may be part of the issue.
- thomasjbevan 5y agoYouTube refs are great for music, but awful for any kind of ‘content’
- piokoch 5y ago"Did you know that marketers lobbied for underground design and architecture? Long labyrinths and slow escalators allow marketers to exhibit hundreds of hypnotising billboards." I did not. Are there any evidences for this? Tried google something but found nothing. Marketers must be really powerful if they can affect the way underground stations are designed, I thought design is done to be as cheap as possible, since digging all those tunnels is expensive anyway, so making it even more expensive by digging some more tunnels to make them longer sounds indeed horribly. Next: "Angel is the station with the longest escalator in London. The vertical rise is 27.5 meters and the total length is 61 meters, making it 3rd longest in Europe. Flashing pictures don't bring me joy but the long escalator reminds me of the time when I was living in St. Petersburg. The average underground escalator in there is deeper and longer than the average escalator in London, and probably anywhere else. " Ok, so marketers were so powerful also in Soviet Union, as most of the Underground was built then. This gets really interesting. I would never say communists fell into ads tech stuff too. There are obvious shortcomings of ads tech, like intrusive tracking, gathering information that can be used against people (to sell them products for a higher price, refuse job, renting flat, selling insurance, etc.). But article is not mentioning that, only the fact that "ads are selling a dream". Well, they are, believe or not, on the markets of ancient Rome, Babylon or Cuzco sellers were also selling the dream of having the tastiest vegetables, the most durable pots, the best spears and daggers.
- the_gipsy 5y ago> Ok, so marketers were so powerful also in Soviet Union, as most of the Underground was built then. This gets really interesting. I would never say communists fell into ads tech stuff too. Don't you see it? What are the glorious murals depicting the advancements of the workers, if not ads for The Party?
- redis_mlc 5y agoThe USSR was big on producing military hardware, not consumer goods. The queue to buy a car was a decade for most people, and you just paid for whatever was available when it was your turn. I'm curious how you do consumer ads in an environment like that.
- dalbasal 5y agoI know it's silly at this point, but the idea of neuralink and "marketing" creeps me out in a whole new way. There are uncomfortably blurry lines between marketing, recommendation engines and NN systems that will probably be core systems. With the current FB, Youtube, Etc... it's hard to really define where marketing begins and ends. As content recommendation and ad serving engines collaborate and converge...
- thomasjbevan 5y agoYeah, how Musk is generally a hero in the popular imagination of the internet rather than a Bond Villain is beyond me...
- toolz 5y agoIt's pretty simple for me, him and the people he surrounds himself with create tech and don't force anyone to use it. I suspect anyone who dislikes Musk is someone who has a general disdain for everyone on top. I don't expect perfection from Musk, but it's easy to imagine he does most everything with good intentions, or at least no malice. I'm a fan of anyone willing to go broke for what they believe in though and I do recognize his social influence is so strong that it would be very difficult for any human to handle that without getting a god complex.
- dalbasal 5y agoHe's both, which seems an inevitability these days. If enough people glorify someone, a countermovement emerges inevitably. The reverse, more worryingly, is also sometimes true. I'm in the "hero" camp, yet I still made that comment about neuralink. I would probably be more shrill in my concerns if Zuck was doing neuralink. But ultimately, I don't think the individual matters much. The creepiness of social media ads and recommendations systems is mostly because of what those platforms are, not the individual publicly leading them.
- npteljes 5y agoThe current PR strategy is to be relatable and give people some comfort, or something cool, something that entices them. And do the shady stuff in a way they least perceive it.
- busymom0 5y agoPerfect HTML block requesting me to subscribe right after this: > Once you're through the ads jungle, you enter the content maze. Many things you read, watch or listen are designed to sell you something (subscribe, by the way, and leave a comment). The aim is to get more sales, a bigger audience, more clicks, more money, more attention.
- kenoph 5y agoGet ready for canvas-only websites with wasm. Good luck adblocking.
- rorykoehler 5y agoSomeone will build an neural net image recognition browser extension to identify ads and remove them
- FriedrichN 5y agoThen I'll get ready to get off the internet. Most of the internet is already unusable without allowing metric tons of questionable JavaScript. And to be honest, I'm not missing out on anything by not going to those places.
- beprogrammed 5y agoYou can stay on the internet friend, just leave the web behind.
- Bayart 5y agoIf that's a thing, I'll just end up treating them the same way I do now with sites who don't make GDPR consent easy to deny : blacklist them forever regardless of content.
- eingaeKaiy8ujie 5y agoI don't think it would change anything. Ad blockers usually do the blocking on the network request level.
- GekkePrutser 5y agoThey do but those things are harder to block as techniques like DNS over HTTPS take hold.
- johnhellion 5y agoA friend of mine blocked all ads on the router side
- jokoon 5y agoI genuinely believe that one could make an app where users just knowingly and willingly browse ads that are proposed and tailored to them, based on interests they decide to share or choose. Like an ad store. One would think "but you're talking about Instagram". No, users would actually be able to choose the ads, and posters would always be required to pay a minimum amount per ad. The users could like or dislike the ads and never gain anything by watching ads, to avoid bot accounts. Generally the goal would be to have an honest advertising system where users don't feel harassed by ads, since they would consent to not watch them and decide what to watch. When I think hard I'm still describing Instagram. But it seems advertising will always have a bad reputation of harassing users. This might change, but it still seems like an impossible problem as long as it's immoral to gather user data.
- mft_ 5y agoNot seeing the vision; why would anyone choose to watch ads if there was nothing in it for them? That seems worse than the current situation (for me) - right now I’m ‘paid’ to watch ads by being able to access services (eg YouTube) which would otherwise come at a direct cost.
- dopidopHN 5y agoSometime I know I’m about to buy something I need and I’m open to suggestions. I would watch ad at this point.
- username90 5y ago> Not seeing the vision; why would anyone choose to watch ads if there was nothing in it for them? People do it all the time on Netflix, Steam, Amazon etc. Why do you believe people would stop doing that?
- tomjen3 5y agoIt might be worth it to me to see things that I might want to buy.
- micdr0p 5y agoInstagram?
- busymom0 5y agoFor those wanting to read a detailed breakdown on underground advertising in London: https://www.promo-media.co.uk/type-of-ads/underground/ https://www.promo-media.co.uk/type-of-ads/underground/
- thomasjbevan 5y agoThanks for this.
- thrwaeasddsaf 5y agoI don't really understand the point about dreams. Do they sell you dreams? What kind of dreams? I see ads for products and services, most of which do not resonate with me at all. I have my own dreams, and I don't see them having anything to do with marketing.
- thomasjbevan 5y agoThey say the devils greatest trick was making humanity believe he didn’t exists. And advertisers greatest trick is making you think that ads don’t work on you. We like to think we are above it all (I know I do) but why do I drink one brand of vodka as opposed to another. Objectively they are all identical. Clearly at some point some piece of branding breached my defences, you know?
- thrwaeasddsaf 5y agoThat's beside the point, I think. What's the dream? Yes, I might prefer pepsi to coca cola or vice versa and maybe that's a product of marketing, but both are just drinks to me. Just another product. Which I might buy once in a while, but it's really got nothing to do with my dreams.
- MonsterBurger 5y agoSome ads will come across as obvious if you aren't their intended audience the ones made for you will barely feel like ads at all.
- wolfpack_mick 5y agoWith selling dreams they mean selling the scene in which your insecurity has been relieved. People feel pinned down in their life, so a common dream sold is to be free. Think of Mac and their proposition of enabling your creativity (a creative person is unconstrained). A lot of car and motorbike companies also show their products as liberating in different ways. Beer ads often show popularity and unselfconscious social interaction, which is a big deal for young guys. For course there's dreams of beauty, success, feeling accepted.
- sunsipples 5y ago"What if marketers can build an infinite shithole of ads inside the virtual world instead of the physical? Wait, hold on a second..." this makes me glad for add blockers, VPNs, TOR, Canvas manipulators, piholes, and such. Sitting in front of a friends TV for a coffee and the amount of advertising from the moment she turns her TV on (the damn thing has adverts on its menu bar...) and then the sprawling chaos of attention grabbers from free to air tv and finally youtube itself. Thankfully I saw the recently uploaded and monetised video her sister put on line including its 5 seconds of advertising at the start and 15 seconds of unskippable advertising 25 seconds before the video finished. I have no regrets for my ignorance
- bondarchuk 5y agoBut what can we do? It just feels like the thought that we could easily abolish advertising in public spaces, if we wanted, doesn't even occur to anyone. Some considerations: - Governments (state as well as municipality) like having some inescapable public ad space, because they use it too, for announcements and such. Solution: decouple commercial advertising and government announcements. - "But how will people find out about new products?" - yes, I've heard people say this without any irony, maybe nowadays we can respond that people are on their phones all the time so they can still see ads there. Some opt-in advertising solution (like jokoon is describing) could be an alternative as well. - "What about store signage and shop windows?" - I think these shouldn't be included in an outdoor advertising ban, however advertisers are sure to try and muddy the waters here to get small businesses on their side, so it would be wise to emphasize this from the start. - "I like ads, some of them look nice" - replace billboards with trees, art, the sky... - "What about the revenue the city gets from advertising space?" - The most hairy and perhaps most important point. I would like to make explicit all the implicit exchanges of value involved in advertising, but it might be too abstract for the average Joe. Someone pays the city to show me something. That means the ability to show it to me is worth more to them than what they pay the city. It also means that at the end of the day, the money is somehow coming from me, and this amount could be larger than what the city gets out of it, even. Therefore I would actually save money if the city abolished advertising and just raised taxes a little. Of course there is the false consciousness that many people have, "I don't get influenced by ads". - Negative psychological effects of advertising, the basic human right to not have to look at something designed to manipulate you. I feel this on a deep level but you quickly start sounding like a crazy person if you explain it to someone who doesn't really get this. Maybe an alternative would be to refer to objective studies relating advertising and wellbeing.
- Joker_vD 5y agoThe "this amount could be larger than what the city gets out of it" reminded me about a suggestion that the biggest beneficiary of the online ads are the data carriers: downloading that 6 MB video ad on your generally not-unlimited mobile data plan costs money.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- shrubby 5y agoBlack Mirror episode Fifteen Million Merits. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits
- Nicksil 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits
- oytis 5y agoWhat's really weird in Western society is that we have to outsource some useful jobs (like actually making things) to other countries and reluctantly keep others (like caring for the sick or cooking food) in a low paid limbo so that educated people can engage in useless and still not at all rewarding or at least fun activities.
- the_lonely_road 5y agoThat’s not weird and we don’t “have” to outsource making things. Labor is very expensive in the land of the dollar printing machine and shades of cheap leading all the way to “fractional” cost in the far away lands forced to collect their dollars. As such anything that can be done faraway will be. My shirt can be made in Taiwan or Arkansas and it’s imperceptible to me. When so need to get an MRI flying to Taiwan is out of the question and a day trip to Arkansas is impractical. I need a doctor down the street I can see with a half day off work.
- tsjq 5y agoAm I the only one who feels this like a bot created work?
- johnhellion 5y agoYou are not the only one. I often feel myself a bot.
- dredmorbius 5y agoWe are not bots. We are autononmous independent entities, living within a simulated Universe.
- hyko 5y agoThe evilest inventions of the XXI century are not “better” guns, bombs, […] The cruellest and the most inhuman creations are infinite scroll and push-notifications. Comparing push notifications to the human toll inflicted by guns and bombs is asinine beyond belief. In the grand scheme of things, nobody gives a shit that someone had the audacity to try and distract you. It’s not super important.
- johnhellion 5y agoThe original sentence contained more examples than just guns and bombs obviously making the comparison not serious. Guns and bombs have been with us for centuries. The effect of them is known and it always same - it kills. We are already good at killing, invented the deadliest weapons and we don't really need to go "deadlier". However, mental health issues, attention span, distractions, Dopamine feedback loop, etc. are also issues and they are something new for humanity. These things might kill slowly, and not exactly in a physical sense. The effect of them isn't visible yet but I believe we will see it in a few generations. Cheers, John
- hyko 5y agoThanks for taking the time to reply to my obnoxious rant John. I guess when we talk about destructive power, this topped out in the 1950s with fusion weapons. It’s unclear if that technology will represent the apex of deadliness forever, or whether we’ll discover and develop something more powerful in the future. As you say, even ordinary munitions are plenty deadly and are causing misery ever single day. However, if we talk about evil weapons, they are very much in active development; there’s seemingly no limit to the cruel and unusual ways we’re willing to fuck other people up. Technological development on those has not ceased. I’m actually in agreement that the economic incentives mixed with technology (and a lack of scruples) has led to a vastly degraded information landscape; where we differ is that I think the comparison–even as a literary device–weakens the argument and makes the concerns seem trivial.
- elzbardico 5y agoIt is called a hyperbole, a literary device where you deliberately use an obvious exaggeration to make your point.
- stared 5y agoMarketing is the current dominating religion. Traditional religions promise us a blessing in our life (or cursing our enemies and wrongdoers) or a good afterlife. Political ideologies promise us heaven on earth. Marketing promises us a better life, more joy, better social status (as discussed in the blog post). Even more - temples used to be the most central and well-kept building for cities; now, there are shopping malls. For some, e.g. Apple store, the resemblance is intentional. Similarly, when it comes to the festival - it does not matter what you believe in for Xmas. It matters if you buy gifts.
- timw4mail 5y agoI'm frustrated that every gas station seems to have ad-riddled gas pumps now. Sure, there might be some low-quality content clips, or ads for the station's convenience store, but that doesn't really help matters. And the noise...which generally is not mutable
- drivingmenuts 5y agoWhen the Revolution comes, first thing we should do is shoot all the marketers. They probably sold us the Revolution in the first place.