Advertising unethical

I’d say it’s not inherently unethical. How else would you find out about options for a thing you need?

How current the ad industry works however, can die in a fire.

You can just search for it, you don’t need ads for that. Ads is a really bad way to find out about options, because it’s never about quality, it’s all about appearance.

How would you know what to search for? Some advertising is fine - a sign for a restaurant or industry mailers or magazines, “related products”, etc etc are all very tame forms of advertising. The problem is hyperintrusive advertising which has now spiraled so far into hell that it drives a model of data harvesting and content slop that’s slowly tainting all access to information we have.

How would you know what to search for?

Because of the needs I have, when I am hungry ill search for recipes or restaurants. When my apartment needs cleaning ill search for cleaning supplies, when I am bored ill look up what movies are playing.

I actually can not come up with a single situation where advertisement would be needed or helpful in anyway. I also do not have a problem with smaller advertisement, but in my dreams they are all banned regardless. Won’t be missing those.

Okay, to break down the point: search for them where?

I guess on the internet or in the store.

So how do people get on the internet or in the store? Heck, how do you know that the store exists in the first place (and if the store doesn’t have what you need, what do you do?)

I’m just after a middle ground - the current insanity of advertising is obviously too much, but the idea of doing away with it entirely isn’t feasible either. Burning all the advertising execs at the stake might be a good place to start in terms of reforming things…

Do you not have friends? Word of mouth recommendations exist.

Relevant XKCD:

The value of word of mouth advertising is the reason we have to deal with the hell that is astroturfing ad campaigns.

Not all word of mouth is advertising. While word mouth advertising is powerful, that argument is still just a straw man.

This seems like it’s not going to be a productive conversation if you’re going to accuse me of using a strawman argument.

All word of mouth advertising is advertising. You’re advertising that you like something to your friends. That it’s viewed as “not advertising” by so many is the reason it’s so valuable, and why so much effort is being expended to manufacture and subvert it, since it’s one of the last forms left people aren’t super conscious of. “Telling other people about the thing” is the oldest and most basic form of advertising, but it’s still advertising, and people have worked to exploit it since the earliest records we have. Hell, even Ea Nasir advertised via word-of-mouth.

This seems like it’s not going to be a productive conversation if you’re going to accuse me of using a strawman argument.

It seems like its not going to go anywhere because you think of all human communication as an act of manipulation.