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Comment by throwaway77385 | Hacker News Reader

Ads, which are the sole reason for the attention-grabbing-at-all-costs society we find ourselves in, are, in my opinion, one of the greatest cancers to ever befall us.

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Ads are information. They're made up of fact and opinion. The facts are valuable. I would like to know if there's a new pizza place that opened in my town. We all, by necessity, have to buy lots of things in life, and we should know what the options are. We're also adults who can separate the fact that a pizza place exists from their biased claim that it's the best pizza.

We don't need to go overboard with calling advertising cancer. As is usually the case, we can ignore the most extremist takes. Ads are annoying more often than useful, but you can say that about lots of things in life.

Ads are to information what propaganda is to objective reporting. Informative ads used to exist, e.g. the content of the venerable Computer Shopper magazine was mostly ads and quite informative. What changed? Well, those Computer Shopper ads mostly consisted of lists of bits and parts and widgets followed by their sales price, some contact information and that's it. Not so for the blithering idiocracy which is the 'modern' advertising industry where it is all about lifestyle and image and signalling and sex and anything else except for just saying 'buy our widget for €XX.yy a piece, 10% off when buying 3 or more'. Nope, instead of an informative list of widgets and gizmos we get a diverse couple - black man, white woman - smiling happy smiles because of ${reasons} which have nothing to do with whatever they're trying to peddle. Add some bullshit about sustainability and building better worlds together and such, drape it in a rainbow flag and done, here's your ad for those ramen noodles. Oh, you're selling cars instead of noodles? No problem, we'll ask the diverse couple to eat their noodles in a parking lot. What, no noodles? Fine, let them starve in the parking lot, smiling happy smiles because of $reasons. We'll throw in an angry fool of a white man who can be told off by the kind and wise black man, that'll sell those noodles - ehhh sorry, cars. Yes, cars, or was it bathroom slippers? Doesn't matter. Here's your ad, now pay us.

This is why ads should be something you actively look for, not something that is shoved into your eyeballs on every medium conceivable.

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