It's not really performative. Billboards occupy a lot of space, both mental and physical. I've had the privilege to walk through ad-free cities and it's like ni

It's not really performative. Billboards occupy a lot of space, both mental and physical. I've had the privilege to walk through ad-free cities and it's like night and day. Once you return to the rest it suddenly becomes clear how garish and vile the ads we've become used to are, and how amateurish the deal we've struck is. Billboards don't bring in that much revenue to the collective compared to what they do to cities. From your perspective, you want to grow a business and become wealthy. That's fine, but why should we participate in that goal and tolerate a significant negative externality for very little reward? The idea that your business should be able to blot the public space for profit is a false premise, just one that people have grown used to for historical reasons.