Even as an advertiser (especially as an advertiser), I am convinced that outlawing advertising is the best thing we can do for our world now. More than gun control. More than tackling climate change. More than lowering the price of eggs.
Removing these advanced manipulation tools would force everyone—politicians included—to snap back into reality. By outlawing advertising, the machinery of mass delusion would lose its most addictive and toxic fuel.
I started out reading this smugly saying to myself yeah, right.
But by the end I’m sold. Let’s ban advertising.
We can start small, maybe with city ordinances. Then roll it out county wide, then at the state level. Once other states see how quiet and sane things can be, they’ll adopt the ban too. The ones that don’t will remain snarling islands of rage & delusion until the people move away.
Let’s ban advertising.
the entire state of vermont already banned roadside billboards years and years ago. change is possible!!
I got curious and read the article.
Nothing in it “sold” me, or introduced any new ideas I hadn’t already thought about. The only things I would have needed to be convinced about, would be like, “how in the world could we enforce such a law”
…not on something easily controllable like “billboards” or “public TV ads,” but like: “figure out who sent a mass email, prove it was within our definition of ‘paid or third-party advertising,’ find the person who sent it and make them stop, even though they probably aren’t even in a country we have jurisdiction over’
No suggestions on any of this were proposed anywhere in the article.
However, there was, at the end, a suggestion that further articles might address these things. And an appeal to subscribe so you could see those articles.
man, it’ll never happen. I get it. The money’s in it, so there will be advertising. The money’s in it, so switching to subscriptions and forcing you to purchase things will happen more. But lord, I wish things didn’t work like this. And I would love to see solutions!!
As a kid, ads were repellent. They told me that I thought things I didn’t think, and felt things that disgusted me! They came from perspectives I could financially and situationally never have, and acted like I should give them my money about it! Dressed themselves up in flashy music and spectacle and acted like they mattered. Jerks, all of them. Giving you a sign that you should not, unless you truly must, let them fool you into parting with your money. A book never took much of my money, especially not from the library, and it could give me so, so much more.
That belief has never been disproven for me. Jerks, all of them. Ads want your money, your phone’s stealing your data about it, and it’s not an "app”, it’s a software program. And a book is your friend.
Oh, agreed. If all advertising disappeared, I think the world would be happier.
And yep I enjoy reading more than pretty much any other medium of entertainment, in general. I mean I know I’m here for fandom about a movie about a video game, but that type of fascination is a once-a-decade sort of thing for me (and in this case I ONLY got into it because I read a fanfic story, and I still mostly like the fanworks best)
Now, in this magical world without any (paid, third-party) advertising, I’m still not sure how small-time authors would get anyone to see their books, any more than they can now.
The publishers would still do what they currently do, focus all their efforts on promoting the ones that are already famous, and it wouldn’t count as third-party paid advertising because they own the rights to sell and promote it. Even if you could get the government out of corporate pockets enough to pass such a law and enforce it, that enforcement would still find ways to reward corporations and punish individuals. At least I can’t imagine any other scenario.
And, of course, it would still be hard for any of us to distinguish organic “word-of-mouth” promotion from illegal paid promotion, very little would change there.
Still gonna keep reading books, though. And buying whatever I can that’s made independently by people I know. And trying to build community so I have some chance of finding any of that.
