Comment Re:Makes me wonder ... (Score 1) 519
When will it stop? When will we (consumers) be able to find something to do without being bomarded with advertising?
When we stop being complacent about it, is my guess. I live in a typical American town, slaughtered with ads from top to bottom; and yet just because of my habits I suffer a lot less of them than many folk do. I tell every single telemarketer to remove my name from their list, I opt out of everything, I plaster "no solicitations" signs, I return junk mail (or use their postage-paid envelopes to send them each other's ads). As a result, I have about half as much of it to deal with as say, my mom, who's too polite to be snippy with a telemarketer and too honest to put the wrong address on everything she fills out.
In my dream world, all advertising is restricted to areas where people will go looking for the goods and services in question. The YellowPages is a great idea; IMO that's all there should be. You want an ad? Put one in the appropriate online or print publication, or make a commercial to be shown on AdTV or played on CommercialRadio. People who are looking for you can then find you. But I think it's a gross violation of humanity's right to be left alone, and to choose what they think, why and when, to allow industries to bombard public and private spaces with their drivel. Most of it, as mentioned in another comment, has become so sophisticated now that it borders all-out manipulation of people's opinions and desires.
I think what needs to happen to make it stop is for the people being subjected to it to get fed up. Who says they have "the right" to advertise at us? (A flawed piece of legislation that slid through in Santa Barbara a hundred years ago, supposedly giving corporations 'free speech', of course. That's no obstacle though, since any attorney who tried could prove that by virtue of their financial resources, corporations take *more* free-speech-rights than are available to people, thus disenfranchising the individual. Nyah.)
How does it start? A mass optout movement? Carefully targetted "community improvement vandalism"? Boycotts? Lawsuits?
This is where you guys know more than me. I'll take whatever steps are presented to me, though, to stop the onslaught of mindless profitteering sludge from reaching my precious brain. Is it not a fundamental human right to think what we want, when we want??
--Sara Thustra
The Obstacle Is The Path.
When we stop being complacent about it, is my guess. I live in a typical American town, slaughtered with ads from top to bottom; and yet just because of my habits I suffer a lot less of them than many folk do. I tell every single telemarketer to remove my name from their list, I opt out of everything, I plaster "no solicitations" signs, I return junk mail (or use their postage-paid envelopes to send them each other's ads). As a result, I have about half as much of it to deal with as say, my mom, who's too polite to be snippy with a telemarketer and too honest to put the wrong address on everything she fills out.
In my dream world, all advertising is restricted to areas where people will go looking for the goods and services in question. The YellowPages is a great idea; IMO that's all there should be. You want an ad? Put one in the appropriate online or print publication, or make a commercial to be shown on AdTV or played on CommercialRadio. People who are looking for you can then find you. But I think it's a gross violation of humanity's right to be left alone, and to choose what they think, why and when, to allow industries to bombard public and private spaces with their drivel. Most of it, as mentioned in another comment, has become so sophisticated now that it borders all-out manipulation of people's opinions and desires.
I think what needs to happen to make it stop is for the people being subjected to it to get fed up. Who says they have "the right" to advertise at us? (A flawed piece of legislation that slid through in Santa Barbara a hundred years ago, supposedly giving corporations 'free speech', of course. That's no obstacle though, since any attorney who tried could prove that by virtue of their financial resources, corporations take *more* free-speech-rights than are available to people, thus disenfranchising the individual. Nyah.)
How does it start? A mass optout movement? Carefully targetted "community improvement vandalism"? Boycotts? Lawsuits?
This is where you guys know more than me. I'll take whatever steps are presented to me, though, to stop the onslaught of mindless profitteering sludge from reaching my precious brain. Is it not a fundamental human right to think what we want, when we want??
--Sara Thustra
The Obstacle Is The Path.
