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That's a fairly fundamentalist take. Are signs outside shops evil? Window displays? Brochures?
by closewith 4y ago
That's a fairly fundamentalist take. Are signs outside shops evil? Window displays? Brochures?
- marssaxman 4y ago"Fundamentalist" is a fair description; I do feel quite strongly about this. The function of advertising is to intrude on your awareness, stealing attention from whatever it is you actually care about, in order to create a desire for something you were previously content without, in hopes of enriching the advertiser at your expense. Ads are a tax on your attention which hope to to take a toll on your pocketbook; they benefit advertisers by making everyone else's lives just a little bit worse. In Seattle, billboards are forbidden (with a few grandfathered-in exceptions), but stores are still permitted to post signs. This seems like a reasonable compromise; labeling the contents of the building provides useful information, which seems beneficial enough to outweigh the advertising function of the sign. I suppose brochures are fine if you go in and get one because you are curious; but someone walking down the street bothering people by handing them out at random would be an asshole.
- closewith 4y agoThanks for responding. Where do you feel the line is online, specifically in Youtube videos/podcasts, where SponsorBlock is effective?
- marssaxman 4y agoI don't spend a lot of time on Youtube, and rarely have the patience to watch the sort of videos people make in hopes of earning money, so I don't have much of an opinion there. I did install SponsorBlock recently, just in case.