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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   37122 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 2023

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I hate ads as well but they do help match buyers and sellers. Should we outlaw them entirely? If not how far do we restrict?

Aren't there parts of Europe where billboards are banned so that old cities don't look like Times Square or Shibuya?

I'm definitely on the side of slash and burn everything and anything that has to do with the AD business, offline and online. Even if not outright banned, just severely curtailed would be fine too. And not in those meaningless ways the GDPR does. I mean in real, painful, multi-billion-dollar industry destroying ways.

I'm not TracingWoodgrains but I'm very very sympathetic to his point, and my personal limit would be text describing the product, and images of the product.

You're allowed a professional photoshoot of your product, even though I give this allowance very reluctantly (black and white text, no images would be preferred), because I grudgingly admit people prefer to see the thing they're deciding to buy. Absolutely no videos. I don't see a realistic way to get rid of endorsements, unfortunately, but they should be strictly regulated.

Culture building around a product should be banned — no dove beauty campaigns, no mulvaney beer bottles, none of that. "This skin product will do this for your skin, and you can buy it for this price, here". Information sharing between seller and buyer only. The mind of very basic ads you see in local newsletters.

As a side effect this means corporations will effectively be banned from expressing any political, cultural, or controversial opinions publicly (since that is also an advertising campaign, building tribe loyalty to a product) which is wonderful and should be pursued to the extreme— in my ideal universe corporations are essentially politically gagged. Talk about your product alone, or shut up.

Basically, rewinding back as much as possible to the kinds of ads they had back in the very, very early days of advertising before they realized people buy based on emotions not based on facts, with as many emotional factors removed as possible. There's no sticking the genie all the way back into the bottle but cutting off as much of its limbs as possible is still a worthy goal.

This sounds great, I love it. Separation of Corp. and State?

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