I keep bringing up how much I deeply hate ads and the people I've talked to about it have been weirdly apathetic. I don't know how they feel, but to me the omnipresent ads does more psychological damage to me than any other capitalist schemes to melt my brain.
Completely agree, I find it oppressive and a constant psychological assault.
My thoughts exactly when it comes to people who don't seem to mind advertising in general. They come in a couple varieties. On the one hand you have all the "i just tune out the ads" or the "im too smart to be influenced by marketing" types. The cope involved in these cases is sad more than anything else. On the other hand, you have the truly deranged who find advertisements useful. The kind of people who somehow appreciate trackers and spyware because it means they get advertisements "more relevant to their interests" as if that's a good thing. Those types fucking scare the shit out of me.
I have ads so thoroughly purged out of my life that it is legitimately fucking mind blowing to me whenever I visit someone who watches tv. Every single time I'm just repeatedly blindsided by the fact that this atrocity is the norm. They are bombarded with the same annoying-ass commercials every five to ten minutes continuously, 24/7. It's as if they have an IV setup pushing pure corporate propaganda straight into their veins. They can't watch a single episode of a tv show without incessantly being interrupted by a dozen car insurance ads per hour. Worse yet are the fucking prescription drug advertisements.
In a just world this type of shit would be thoroughly outlawed. Anyone involved in creating ads should be charged with crimes against humanity. They are doing actual mass brainwashing. There is no way sitting through this day in and day out doesn't cause significant psychological damage.
Ever since I was younger, like before I was even radicalized, I've hated ads so much. There's something very off-putting (and often insulting) about businesses constantly blasting you with their product or service.
I used to really enjoy watching the NBA but now every time I try it's just "Here are the Lexus™ Keys to the Game," "Welcome to the half time show brought to you by Subway™," ad breaks every two minutes of game time (and even more frequently towards the end of a close game), giant company logos on the court, or more recently logos on their god damned jerseys. It's like you can't watch any live event any more without having ads shoved in your face.
Even when I'm watching/listening to something on my phone and an ad interrupts I will straight up mute the volume and physically look away just so I don't see the ad. I agree with Yogthos that it feels like a "constant psychological assault." I fucking hate it. Bless whoever invented ad block extensions on browsers because without them I would go insane.
They've only gotten worse too. I never liked them, but they definitely felt easier to ignore when I was younger.
Now there is so much data-collection and targeted adverts. With effort it is avoidable but the average person is subjected to way more inisidious advertising than ever, and it very often works. Gods help you if you ever express interest in any hobby that is easily commodifiable.
Ads are horrible. Plain and simple. That along with companies collecting data nonstop. I hate it so much. Windows 11 comes with spying and ads. So did Windows 10. God I wish I could switch to Linux permanently. I know how to get around the limitations, especially with gaming, but then again... AI in the browser that I use. Opera GX
Edit: Gonna reinstall Windows 11 again with new custom configs and I'll be using Vivaldi.
The natural state of man is to observe advertising, or else how could people know where animals to hunt were or which berries to eat?
(I wonder if this has been said seriously by an ad think tank at some point)
"Go back to your roots today! People weren't made to be online all the time. Subscribe to NatureMan today and go back to how people were meant to be with our special curated list of roots and berries especially for you. Subscribe to NatureMan Premium and get digital access to our family of like-minded individuals who will share tips on how to disconnect from the grid and live naturally."
I know its been a common thing in libertarian circles to say "human nature is to find stuff, determine its value, and then try to hock it off", which is such a pessimistic view of humanity, let alone an inaccurate one (which it also is)
I use adblock online and I only listen to public radio and watch public TV (which have no ads). The only times when I am exposed to advertisments are billboards, newspapers, shopping, and whenever I make the mistake to browse on my phone. I still feel like I'm drowning, how do people cope with this shit
Implement a pihole on your home network for ad free mobile browsing as well! Plus no ads on smart TVs or anything else.
it doesn't work that well unfortunately.. it blocks some stuff but not even close to enough for ad free
Public TV not having ads? what is this commie shit? Here in Spain they put ads there too lol. Except on the 24h channel, where theres a continous news loop.
whenever I make the mistake to browse on my phone.
The mobile version of firefox supports addons, so you could put uBlock on it. If you're using android, you can use ReVanced to remove ads from youtube.
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In Poland average commercial break take around 10-15 minutes. It is so bad that even our shitty bootlicking government felt the need to regulate that, but of course they fucked up and it changed nothing. There are more commercial time in TV than the non-commercial time, and the public TV is not much better than the private one despite hevy subsidies and mandatory subsription from every home (27,50 PLN monthly as of now).
pretty sure theres EU regulation that should limit the ads to a certain percentage of the show. Except in cases the show is a comercial itself.
So is Poland not following EU regulations?
I guess they found a loophole. I noticed they very much like to put a commercials right before the show ends, and after it ends they put another one. There's also tons of previews of their own shows (i guess that don't count as commercials) weidly sandwitched between commercial blocks - and that could alternate for a long time. Maybe something like that.
I remember debacle about the volume of the commercials, stations tend to put them up much louder than shows, so people were getting blasted with decibels out of nowhere, this was forbidden too, so they also circumvented that by some kind of sound frequency trick so the commercials are still perceptively louder than shows.
Or maybe they just are ignoring it altogether, polish television regulating organ is very slow and blind unless international scandal blows in their faces.
the loudness thing is indeed a trick to boost perception without breaking rules on peak amplitude.
On the length thing, is weird: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_advertisements_by_country#Europe
https://web.archive.org/web/20080609032858/http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/expert/infopress_page/037-12884-316-11-46-906-20071112IPR12883-12-11-2007-2007-false/default_nl.htm
EU regulations are not waterproof and the European countries tend to do a lot of “looks good on paper” type of laws, where they wax about equity and welfare. But in the end its just a prettier package for an ugly system.
Sounds like NPR (National Public Radio) here in the states. They're not allowed to run ads, so instead they basically have infomercials about the all the wonderful philanthropic things their sponsors do, since in American even publically-owned media outlets still somehow have big coporate backers. Which somehow manages to be the the least obnoxious part of their programming, since at least it provides a break from the continual libbery, shitting on the working class, and unabashed pro-Israel propaganda.
I've been saying all marketing is just black magick. Manipulation, lying, hypnosis, etc. Makes sense to me, anyway.
Yeah, I barely see ads in my life as well. It's definitely a better way to live.
The best thing about traveling in China for a little while was simply the fact that I couldn't understand Chinese unless I stopped and focused on it. With English the conversion of letters and words to information happens subconsciously and instantaneously so you're "forced" to understand it. It was essentially living generally ignorant of things that existed unless I wanted to discover something. I really miss it to be honest.
Ads are why I quit mobile games and (part of) why I abhor “football” (USian variety).
Apparently the average US football game has only 11 minutes of actual playing time, out of an average of 3 hours running time, mostly taken up by commercials and stoppages. I have no idea how anyone watches these games, they just feel like one long commercial, even during those 11 minutes that they're actually playing.
God’s Own Junkyard was a real good read. The few US states that got anti-billboard legislature through also squarely had the right idea
People's Korea today does not have advertisements in public. Glory to the DPRK!
