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"I know that people who can barely earn their living will spend money on Fairness creams that cost as much as a weeks food. ... even someone who can barely earn

"I know that people who can barely earn their living will spend money on Fairness creams that cost as much as a weeks food. ... even someone who can barely earn their living ends up spending money to buy that stuff." Interesting that an essay on this very topic is trending right now on HN front page: http://tressiemc.com/2013/10/29/the-logic-of-stupid-poor-people/ http://tressiemc.com/2013/10/29/the-logic-of-stupid-poor-peo.... You might want to read it. As for ads, let children make up their own minds. Not all ads are bad. Some ads I came across on the net made me buy stuff that eventually lead to picking up a very satisfying and fun hobby.

imakesnowflakes 11y ago
Yes. I saw it just after I posted this. Felt really weird. But the point I was trying to make was a bit different. That post was arguing about how people can pick up cues from real life and use that information to arm themselves with expensive stuff with which they think they can climb up the social ladder. That is a very smart thing to do. But what Ads do is to feed people the same kind of info, only a highly skewed version of it to their advantage. >As for ads, let children make up their own minds. Yes let them. But I think we should also help them see things for what they really are. In case of Ads, how it initially appears to tell that 'hey, I have made this product', but how it also is about telling us 'hey, you need this product' creating a need when there is none, and how it can influence people subtly. And then let them make up their minds how much they want to be exposed to things like that.