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You could say almost the same thing walking through an ancient Bazaar as sellers yell advertisements at you for their wares.
by tinalumfoil 4y ago
You could say almost the same thing walking through an ancient Bazaar as sellers yell advertisements at you for their wares.
- manimino 4y agoEspecially if the Bazaar sellers followed you throughout the day through your work and leisure time.
- TremendousJudge 4y agoAnd took notes on your personal life and tried to sell you things they'd specifically think you'd want. And traded notes with other sellers.
- Double_a_92 4y agoIt's not uncommon in smaller rural villages to have sellers slowly drive through the streets and yell that they are selling things.
- jjoonathan 4y agoRight, but it probably sucked. We heavily romanticize it today, but we romanticize all sorts of things that were actually not so great.
- gonzo41 4y agoLike the middle ages. All of it sucked.
- bsedlm 4y agowrong. some of it sucked maybe even the majority of it (if you insist) but most of it is not all of it.
- notriddle 4y agoThe Black Death sucked. Most of the middle ages probably wasn't that bad, but the civilization-destroying plague destroyed civilization, and Renaissance-era propagandists exploited the living memory of the plague to make themselves look better.
- titzer 4y agoThe one constant throughout time is that things sucked if you were poor and rocked if you were rich.
- ajmurmann 4y agoI'd rather be middle class in a developed country now than any king 200 years ago. No amount of wealth could have gotten me modern medicine, especially anesthesia(!). Even stuff that's now trivial like pretty fresh tropical fruit or good food from other countries in general would have been very hard to come by. I have way more knowledge and entertainment at my finger tips than any medieval king could have ever dreamed of.
- titzer 4y agoTo each his own. But look at all the wonderful things that medieval kings commissioned to keep themselves occupied. Art, music, cathedrals, palaces, sports, plays, libraries, etc. The impact of a (generous) medieval king in terms of things others could eventually enjoy far outpaces this age's netflix consumption.
- CamperBob2 4y agoAsk Henry VIII if he wouldn't give all that up for some gout medication.
- FearNotDaniel 4y agoThat the same Henry VIII who shut down all the monasteries, which for most of the population were the only source of anything resembling medical and social care? Karma's a bitch.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- wardedVibe 4y ago
- nescioquid 4y agoGenerally agree, but humanism and spaces between words are pretty okay.
- SilasX 4y agoOne time HN linked an article romanticizing pickpocketing, with the expected reaction from me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6065434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6065434
- goodpoint 4y agoHN never relents on its cultish techno-optimisms.
- MisterTea 4y agoThe sellers don't attempt to follow you around until you die.
- dredmorbius 4y agoThis started becoming common in shopping malls at some point during the aughts or 2010s. Usually accompanied by large in-corridor vendor displays which further obstructed already-crowded walkways. I stopped going to malls. High-street shopping districts still don't affect me to the same viscerally-negative degree. Even those which seem to be fairly consciously emulating and attempting to create a mall-like atmosphere. There's something about the open-air nature, and the fact that sounds attenuate rather than echoing off hard surfaces from all sides.
- CSMastermind 4y agoIn NYC you're mostly trained just to ignore people trying to get your attention. Or at least I was. I assume ignoring banner ads is a similar phenomenon.
- Poppys 4y agoOr the same about YouTubers, I'm fascinated that my kids don't find the constant yelling and over emoting annoying or at least suspicious.
- xeromal 4y agoYeah, if you live in a city, you're conditioned to ignore people trying to get your attention. Nothing is free. Don't believe it. I remember one time my little brother from my tiny hometown was visiting me in LA and I warned him to ignore the guy with the CDs. Don't let him put it in your hand and avoid eye contact. Told my sister the same thing but she didn't believe me and lost 20$ to a shitty mixtape in a millisecond. Those guys are slick. haha
- 5e92cb50239222b 4y agoIt happens to this day in many parts of the world (like mine).
- amelius 4y agoIt was sort of acceptable before the sellers in the Bazaar did a mind-melt that made them all effectively the same person.
- pessimizer 4y agoYou can't say the same thing about the Bazaar because that's why you went to the Bazaar. The shouts are what's going to be directing your entire journey. That's why ads aren't annoying in a trade magazine, because the ads are probably the reason you bought the trade magazine; the articles are commentary on the ads.
- anigbrowl 4y agoAccurate. And in a trade magazine, most the ads are making a value proposition of some sort; the ones that are purely based on emotional appeals tend to end up as industry memes, synonymous with vacuity.
- pessimizer 4y agoYup. A trade magazine ad is 100x more likely to be an undecorated copy of a datasheet than some vague emotional bullshit.
- anigbrowl 4y agoThat's exactly how it feels for me to look at the magazine rack in a drugstore, except that little to none of it is interesting.