RE: Omg Steemers, look how much ad-revenue we are missing out!
Advertising is psychological manipulation.
I consider it abuse.
I expect that in about 100 years, humanity will look back on advertising as a criminal activity. Of course, I don't expect most people to agree with this in our current time period. We're heavily indoctrinated.
To condemn advertising (psychological manipulation of the human biocomputer) in our present-day would cause too much cognitive dissonance in 99% of people. Our world is based around the idea that you have to trick people into buying things, rather than have them naturally discover them.
As we all know, advertising/marketing was developed by Freud's nephew Edward Bernays, and used manipulation of the subconscious mechanisms Freud discovered to get people to buy things they didn't want or need.
This was extensively covered in the BBC documentary Century of the Self.
If Steemit started putting adverts on the site, I would leave immediately.
I don't participate in the abuse of human consciousness.
Awesome comment, thank you! I agree with many points you made. Ads are pure brainwash for gullible people.
Thanks :)
What scares me most about advertising is that I am myself susceptible to it.
I walked down the street yesterday on a microdose of LSD and was acutely aware of the profound effect all the different billboards were having on my deep subconscious. Usually this would have been sub-perceptual.
Although I was not necessarily being drawn to buy any particular items, I was aware that I was being fed a cruel diet of fantasy landscapes and people that (had I not been on a microdose) would have contributed to a dull pervasive sense of being "not good enough" or needing something "more" to fulfil me.
Then, like many people I would probably have bought something to temporarily fill the hole amplified by the imagery.
One objective of advertising is to create anxiety.
I feel it's not just the enticement to purchase a specific item that makes advertising abusive, but also the idealisation of people and environments; the constant implication that we are incomplete and a product (any product) can complete us.
Ugh yes I agree. Materialism is so annoying, many people seem to feed on it.
I am also very surprised at how little people care about reviews.
"Oh look new Iphone, it costs 800$+ so it must be the best!"
"Oh look, headphones by Dre, they cost 3x more than regular ones so they must be the best!"
They don't realize what marketing is and its effects on making something that is the same as something else look better in your eyes and mind.