The Deal With Advertising (Score 3)

This, methinks, is totally out of bound with the prevailing sentiment- but I think the advertising thing has been blown a little out of proportion. I hate annoying and intrusive ads, and I really hate spam email... but generally advertising does have a useful purpose. Namely, to let me know about things I might want. While I am scared shitless of people having too much personal information about me, I can't say that the ostensible goal - that is to customize ad messages to the people who are most likely to benefit from them - is all bad. I mean... i think most of us spend a huge portion of our time buying stuff and thinking about buying stuff... and if people want to let me know about how to buy stuff i want more or are paying less for then I'm a little disingenuous to bitch endlessly right?

It's more the privacy issues and the annoying/intrusive stuff that everyone has a problem with methinks. I mean... advertisements are information... selling stuff makes up the economy... and this is the information economy right? It's making all the geeks rich, we can't complain too much.....