Advertising Is Evil

one more time

Evil is a strong word. Maybe the title should be “Advertising is Bad.” Bad isn’t quite as strong, like big verses giant. Big doesn’t have the same power, yet both essentially mean the same thing, though we may interpret giant as bigger than big.

The dictionary definition clearly distinguishes evil from bad. Evil is profoundly bad. Although the dictionary doesn’t add intent to the meaning, as we generally use the word to imply malintent. Good people sometimes do bad things, but they aren’t evil. One has to go beyond making an error of judgment to be evil—one has to mean it. Yet, those who are called evil think they are doing good. No one actually intends evil.

Still, it may be a good idea to draw a line between bad and evil. Nothing is completely good nor bad. Oxygen is good, too much is lethal, then you could argue it’s evil. It’s the same with water, necessary for life, but too much will kill you. For the most part, oxygen and water are good more than bad. It would be a mistake to call either evil. On the other hand, sulfuric acid is toxic to all life, corrosive to rock and many metals, violently reactive with water. It could be called evil because the danger it poses is greater than its good.

It’s been said before, advertising is evil, and it seems no one believes it. Most think it’s not even bad. They think calling it evil is hyperbole, the ridiculous ravings of a raging ranter. Well. . ,

think again.

Ask yourself, “What’s in it for me?”

I learn about new products and services that I may be interested in acquiring.

Ask yourself, “What do I need that I don’t already have?” (New? Most advertising is for familiar stuff.) 

I can think of lots of things I want.

The question was need, not want.

Ask yourself, “When there is a need or want, why can’t I search for it on my own, voluntarily, without it being shoved in my face and distracted by a lot of repetitive crap that doesn’t interest me?”

Why, of course I can.

Then how does advertising benefit you?

Well, ah, ya know it’s kinda difficult to say. I get all kinds of free stuff supported by ads.

No, it isn’t difficult. Advertising only benefits the advertiser (and even that’s questionable). It’s about getting you to buy more than you want, more than you need, and things that aren’t good for you. It benefits only the biggest spenders on advertising, the ones who already dominate the market. The ones who shout out smaller businesses that could provide you with better products, better service. The ones squashing the little guys you’ll never know exist. It hinders small local businesses that make communities unique and healthy. And in case you haven’t noticed, that free stuff is paid for with hidden costs. Free is expensive.

In truth, advertising does you a disservice. It helps monopolies grow. It keeps you ignorant. It misleads you. It produces nothing of value. It provokes you to spend more, consume more, waste more. And worst of all, it makes the products and services you truly need and want cost more. It drains you emotionally and economically. And it drains society of resources that could be used for something productive.

Ask yourself, “Who pays for all that advertising?”

The advertiser pays for it, duh!

Think again. You pay for it. The hundreds of billions spent each year on advertising are hidden in the price you pay for the product. And you pay no matter whether you ignore ads, block ads, or suck’em up. The advertising wheel keeps on rolling and rolling and . . .

. . . rolling over you.

Now, ask yourself, “Do I want to pay for annoying, lying, manipulating, exploiting, stupefying, evil?”

I wish there were a solution. Ad blockers help. Paying for ad-free apps helps. Dropping out of antisocial media helps, but these only placate some of the annoyances. They don’t solve the problem, because the problem is multifaceted. First, there’s not enough resistance and outrage from ordinary people. Second, it’s so ingrained in business, they can’t see their way out of it. Third, it’s deeply seated in our lives to the point that most people accept it as normal and innocuous. Fourth, it has become a juggernaut of outlandish proportions that stopping it is unimaginable. Fifth, no matter how pernicious, invasive, in-your-face, obnoxious ads are, the majority are blind to the harm advertising causes to themselves and the environment. In the final analysis, its harm far out weighs any fantasy of good.

It’s amazing how insanely pervasive advertising is. Do a search for “advertising is evil.” You’ll be stunned. On the first page of results you’ll find sites harping on the evils of advertising while the site itself is hammering you with ads and studded with multiple trackers whose only purpose is to plow more ads in your direction.

Read : Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, Jaron Lanier, 2018

And more related reading—
Who Owns the Future?
Bye-bye
Dubble Bubble
Upside-down, Inside-out and Backwards
Illicit Ideas

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Addictions

of the third kind*

The word addiction comes loaded with strong negative implications. Addicts are looked down on as deviants and criminals. The addict is considered sick, weak-willed, and fully at fault for succumbing to the addiction.

I take exception to most of those attitudes. They fail to recognize one important factor.

Addiction is normal. If you already understand this, you can skip over the grayed out blah-blah-yada-yada.

We are chemically hardwired for becoming addicted to many substances. And, as we know, addictions can be psychological, not just chemical. We talk about sugar addiction, gambling addiction, sex addiction. It’s not limited to only some people, we are all potential addicts. I’d even go so far as to say, we are all addicts of one form or another. But let’s not go down that road, it would only be a distraction. The point here is, we need to stop blaming the addict for something that’s part of our nature, and start blaming ourselves for not acknowledging when our, and I do literally mean you & me & everyone, adverse addictive behaviors become evident. Take good hard look at the consequences, then restructure our behavior before the addiction becomes abusive, injurious, pernicious, undesirable, and self-destructive.

There are other problems to certain addictions not often recognized. The harmful effects are sometimes subtle, frequently delayed, often adapted to or compensated for. Less than acute, slowly building harm blocks a clear view of the addiction and its deleterious effects. Sometimes blocking it to the point that we don’t even realize the addiction in ourselves or others. At other times an addiction can be so ubiquitous that it seems acceptable. This everyday acceptability is particularly dangerous. If, for instance, everyone were an alcoholic, we would find the behavior more tolerable.

Habitual behaviors are complicated by their mix of positive reward and negative consequences. Alcoholics drink until they get sick or knowing there’s a hangover in store for the next day. Despite the punishment for the excessive consumption, the behavior gets repeated. Tobacco is a perplexing example. The reward is short-lived and barely felt by a regular smoker, the withdrawals are mild, but the drive to satiate nicotine receptors is powerful despite apparently weak feedbacks. This demonstrates how the rewards can be feeble while the drawbacks are delayed and hidden by time. The unhealthy habit persists because we’re blindsided to the negatives making it easy to deny that there’s big trouble down the road.

The personal and social ills caused by chemical addictions are fairly well known. The remedies are less agreed upon. The first step unanimously accepted is to admit there is a problem. Following admission is the big challenge : changing the lifestyle patterns that allowed the behavior to get out of hand. More challenging still are psychological addictions. These are more insidious because they are harder to define or quantify.

The modern world has brought us a slew of new technologies that have revolutionized civilization. These advances have many unintended side effects that negate much of their positive aspects. As we adopt them, they become an integral part of our lives—on some we develop a complete dependency. The most damaging, unfortunately, are unrecognized, unacknowledged, and not only an everyday part of modern life, but thought of as absolutely necessary; the ones we believe we can’t live without.

There is one technology that singlehandedly has devastated the entire globe. It rips through our cities, scars are countryside, raises our stress level, threatens our environment, endangers our health, puts our lives in jeopardy, and lowers our quality of life. There is little in the contemporary world that has caused cumulatively as much damage. It has insinuated itself gradually into our lives to the point that we are, have been for generations, thoroughly addicted and don’t even know it.

If you haven’t noticed this global addiction, it’s not surprising. Everyone alive today has grown up with it, depended on it, even fallen in love with it. It’s accepted as a natural, ordinary activity that is here to stay. Like most addictions, it has gotten worse year by year. Like most addictions, we are oblivious to the glaring downsides. And like most of our problems, we believe we can remedy the symptoms without dealing with the cause. Every remedy is guaranteed to fail. We’ve been attempting for decades, but because the cause has not been met head on, the problem continues to grow. Read this link, but beware, denial is the first response of an addict : A Global Review.

Why do we put ourselves through this?

One truly smart forward thinking city.

If CO2, NOx, CO, CxHy, PM2.5s aren’t enough additional reasons, here’s another major one : Micro & Nano Plastics

*note : There are generally recognized two types of addiction : chemical and behavioral. There a third less recognized type—societal. See this link.

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