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This analogy seems weak. In general, this post argues one way while ignoring all the good advertising does. Do cancers typically do good things at their baselin
by someothherguyy 2y ago
This analogy seems weak. In general, this post argues one way while ignoring all the good advertising does. Do cancers typically do good things at their baseline?
- Jenk 2y ago"all the good things advertising does" is doing a lot of the leg work without much being specified.
- superfunny 2y agoHere's a good that advertising does: letting people know how your product or services address some pressing need.
- GeoAtreides 2y agoexplain what pressing needs this BMW adv addresses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8UPg6hyDBg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8UPg6hyDBg
- GuB-42 2y agoThe pressing need to have an electric car you enjoy driving. It may not be your need, but to some people, it is. It doesn't mean there are no problems with ads today.
- robertlagrant 2y agoYou've confused an individual instance with the general category to an extraordinary extent here.
- GeoAtreides 2y agoyou know, I was just making a point, not compiling an exhaustive list of the ads that are not about pressing needs
- robertlagrant 2y agoBut what point were you making? If I say "not all humans are over 6ft" and you say "Well what about LeBron James?" are you making a point?
- jfengel 2y agoI put on plays. Some people would enjoy seeing them. I can only do four or five performances so I can't wait for people to rave to their friends about it. I put up polite, attractive, informative ads in forums that I think will have people who might come to my shows. Not everyone will; the large majority won't. But some of these are web sites that talk about theater, where my ad spend pays for the site itself to exist. I recognize that the ads we most notice are nothing like that. But the idea that all ads are automatically a bad thing misses out on the fact that the original purpose of ads, as cited in the article, does still exist. If you waved a magic wand and got rid of ads my theater probably wouldn't exist. No big loss, I suppose, but the world is very slightly poorer for it.
- reginald78 2y agoThings are so far gone at this point I'm perfectly willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater on this one.
- coldtea 2y ago>while ignoring all the good advertising does. What good?
- GuB-42 2y agoInforming potential customers of products that might be useful to them. Let's say you are the inventor of the chainsaw, you need to tell lumberjacks that chainsaws exist, that's advertising. Otherwise you won't sell any and your invention will be lost, while lumberjacks will continue struggling with inefficient tools.
- oneeyedpigeon 2y ago> Informing potential customers of products that might be useful to them. Isn't there an insurmountable conflict of interest when the person doing the informing is also the person who directly benefits from the product being 'useful' to as many people as possible?
- GuB-42 2y agoYes there is, but you have to tell someone you have something to sell at some point. Even if it goes through independent reviewers, the reviewer has to be reached somehow, that's still advertising. You are probably not going to find a job if you don't tell anyone you need a job, job hunting is also advertising.
- coldtea 2y ago>Yes there is, but you have to tell someone you have something to sell at some point It's 2025. You could list it on your website, have it searchable in search engines, and aggregators for your product category, have independent and user review sites, and lots of other solutions that don't involve advertising. I don't want anyone telling me they have something to sell I didn't ask them to tell me, and when I wasn't looking for such products actively (i.e. not because I searched somewhere else for a similar product). >Even if it goes through independent reviewers, the reviewer has to be reached somehow, that's still advertising No, it's not, unless the reviewer is paid or gets benefits for making your product look good. And a great difference with "independent reviewers" is I can go to them (watch their videos, read their blog, go to their website, or whatever). Advertising, on the other hand, cames to me. And increasingly I can't even skip it or get rid of it. They also take the form of a review. Not a praise, or a video/image unrelated to the product, trying to sell it to me via sex, cool imagery, etc.
- taurknaut 2y agoAll the good advertising does? What are you referring to?
- coldtea 2y agoprobably meant something like the cheapening and commercializing of the arts by sponsoring them
- someothherguyy 2y agoOh you know, economic growth, jobs, efficiencies in matching producers and consumers, etc.
- taurknaut 2y agoSomehow i feel like we can get this with employment that produces value. It'd be more productive to get people to dig ditches—ditches don't destroy our cities, roads, and services, so they produce even more value than ads do. Anyway, the last thing this society needs is encouragement to buy even more crap they never asked for. We can be something better than "that shithole strip-mall where everyone is an ignorant consumer who worships ronald reagan". As much as the evidence points to the contrary, I do believe we are capable of more.
- micromacrofoot 2y agoif you use "jobs" then literally any job can look like a net positive, that's a cop out what about the value lost from the people who work in advertising that have skills applicable to more productive industries
- micromacrofoot 2y agowhat good?
- vipa123 2y agoGood things... lol
- masklinn 2y ago> Do cancers typically do good things at their baseline? Cancers are tissues gone rogue. The original tissue does in fact tend to do “good things”. There are a few transmissible cancers, but the vast majority of them are your own tissues twisted to only consider their own personal survival and short-term gains at the expense of the rest of the organism.
- Mordisquitos 2y ago> Do cancers typically do good things at their baseline? I mean, true, a cancer will probably destroy its host organism. But what about the cells whose mutations allow them to think outside the box, and replicate and expand beyond their wildest dreams by throwing away the limits imposed by overbearing genetic regulations and expectations of the organism? Isn't that a good thing?
- hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago(I agree with you, based on the point being made here, but I'm actually here to say I stumbled across your earlier comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41828485 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41828485 and wanted to say "holy crap". I apologize for interrupting your current thread, it was just too astonishing a medical recovery story for me not to say something.)
- Mordisquitos 2y agoNo apology needed, I'm very happy that you found my old comment so interesting!
- beefnugs 2y agoI knew it was war when i noticed how they force the advertising as ANNOYING as possible: many podcasters have tried to make it reasonable by frontloading at the start or making visual queues you can easily fast-forward. But then you can tell they have specifically FORCED the creators to make them interstitial. The problem is this whole thing could have been gamified into something people want to participate in: I am looking for baby stuff, so its time to launch up The Buy Game. Only inside this game do I see ads for things I am very specifically signalling I am looking for, limiting what I see to what I want, and mayyybbeee I can click on "i feel lucky" to see something new. SOME kind of participatory signal or a negotiation, not shoved down my throat forcefully Instead it has to be this fucking war, where I know full well I am not going to buy anything i see an ad for, in fact I now keep lists of the most annoying companies to make sure I never ever buy from them. I am considering spending the remaining years of my life making tools to help people get away from this shit
- linsomniac 2y agoJohn Gotti died of throat cancer...