alt Hacker NewsI've always been frustrated by the intense focus the modern economy has on advertising. If I am interested in a product, I would much rather discover it by searching. Having advertisements forced upon me at every turn is a massive waste of resources (time and attention) given only a fraction of a percent of the products have any relevance to my life. I block every form of advertising I can reasonably block. If a company raises the friction sufficiently, I'll find a way around it. I'm mostly an amoral participant in the economy. I pay for YouTube, Disney, etc. but if they make giving them money an unpleasant experience, I have no qualms employing a usenet subscription and *arr stack to dodge the whole thing.
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Modern advertising is not meant for product discovery, but for the incumbents to make sure you associate "burger" with "McDonalds" at a subconscious level.
Ads don't necessarily work through the use of "reason".
They work because you are infinity percent more likely to buy something you know exists vs something you don't know exists.
You live in a bubble. There is a huge amount of the population who are happy to get their brain rot (of all ages by the way, even pensioners) interspersed with ads. And it works. I recently saw my mother's facebook feed and it completely explains all the random shit she's bought off sketchy dropshipping sites lately. I tried to hide a bunch of it but the problem is as soon as she interacts with anything ever again it'll pop back up. She doesn't see the harm, doesn't want to stop and enjoys it.
Always puzzled me how much money can possibly be in trying to optimize sales by some low digit percentage points, versus how much is sacrificed for it.
I actively/mentally block products I see in ads now. For example, when I use Amazon's terrible search feature, I'll make a mental note of which listings are "sponsored" and make sure NOT to buy them. Ever, if possible.
When I see ads for things on YouTube, I automatically assume it's a scam... Because it almost always is!