Mildly Interesting

19713 readers

1344 users here now

This is for strictly mildly interesting material. If it's too interesting, it doesn't belong. If it's not interesting, it doesn't belong.

This is obviously an objective criteria, so the mods are always right. Or maybe mildly right? Ahh.. what do we know?

Just post some stuff and don't spam.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

marcar@lemmy.world

WhatsHerBucket@lemmy.world

Jimbabwe@lemmy.ml

1380

What If We Made Advertising Illegal? (simone.org)

submitted 1 day ago by sundrei@lemmy.sdf.org to c/mildlyinteresting@lemmy.world

381 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The idea feels like sci-fi because you're so used to it, imagining ads gone feels like asking to outlaw gravity. But humanity had been free of current forms of advertising for 99.9% of its existence. Word-of-mouth and community networks worked just fine. First-party websites and online communities would now improve on that.

The traditional argument pro-advertising—that it provides consumers with necessary information—hasn't been valid for decades.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] douglasg14b@lemmy.world -3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Lemmy is essentially just like Reddit at this point. It's just a bunch of the lowest common denominator circle jerking a lack of critical thinking.

You cannot have intelligent discussion, and group think is all that matters. Folks will not read your comment, they will find the single phrase they disagree with and hold onto it for dear life, missing the entire point.

And then ignore the whole premise and idea behind the discussion and reply in a way that makes absolutely no sense if they had average reading comprehension....

I miss the old Internet, where you could actually have discussions and pass ideas back and forth.

[–] sinceasdf@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

This is a new phenomenon here in my experience, the cynic in me says this is ad companies trying to control and shut down the conversation as Lemmy grows. Better to have your opposition not have a realistic and feasible route to their goals.

It reminds me of how close the US was to actual police reform before all the discussion became "defund the police entirely" like that was going to just suddenly fix everything and cause no other problems. Then the whole movement just basically evaporated.

[–] AugustWest@lemm.ee 0 points 1 day ago

I was really suprised to see downvotes for your comment. It was balanced and demonstrated nuance for the concept.

We have an example of an advertisement from 3000 BCE. This is part of the human condition of transfer of information with a hey I make a cool thing, interested in buying it?

Now as for Lemmy, I hope it doesn't get completely bad like reddit. The worse offenders are political or ideological posts like this one.

I am still have good discussions in other areas, so here's hoping.

I miss the old internet too.