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I see the OP point to some degree, but let me say this. If you ever open a business that involves selling stuff (as most businesses do) you're going to eventually want people to see your products. It's how people see stuff so they can buy it. We just have more ways to market stuff today then ever before in history, so it's an overload of advertising now.
I can't leave my house for 5 seconds without being barraged by advertisement everywhere I go by billboards, radio ads, flyers, and people dressed up like giant chickens on street corners.
At home, the TV is equal parts adds and programming, Internet is pop-up hell, and even movies regularly imbed "secret" advertising and product hocking right into the story. People are always knocking on my door, cold-calling me and sending me emails trying to peddle their junk too. I'm sick of it!
When will enough be enough? Does it seem like there is more, harder and heavier advertising than before the economy went south? Why do we put up with it? Does everyone else see through the crude manipulation? There is so much more to life than stuff; why won't Americans demand more life and less advertising?
I see the OP point to some degree, but let me say this. If you ever open a business that involves selling stuff (as most businesses do) you're going to eventually want people to see your products. It's how people see stuff so they can buy it. We just have more ways to market stuff today then ever before in history, so it's an overload of advertising now.
This is true. Remember, Hannibal Lecter said, "We covet that which we see every day."
It is amazing the number of times a day that there is something demanding our immediate attention.....such as advertising, things we own that "beep" or "chime" or blink at us or whatever. You kind of just have to learn to tune things out in your own way or you'll go crazy after a while. We used to have a microwave that when finished cooking would beep every 15 seconds.....for hours on end until you opened the door and closed it again. So you'd put something in for a minute and exit the room for a bit to do something else and you'd hear this constant beeping until you finally paid it the attention it demanded. Advertising is kind of like that. Whether it's billboards, the newest travesty of LCD billboards that blink and change colors to attempt to distract you while you're driving, radio/tv ads that are much louder in volume than the shows they are inserted in and on and on it goes.
If you pay attention there are basically two things that advertisers use to sell you something. Either fear or joy. Life insurance and/or drug companies are always telling you how close you are to death or dying from some horrible disease if you don't buy their product....and everything from kitchen appliances to teeth whiteners etc... are telling you how much more fun you could be having in life if you just buy this or that or something else. You just have to keep telling yourself that your kitchen range/refrigerator/microwave/dishwasher etc... will replace thousands of products that advertisers are attempting to sell us. There are so many one use items.....something that will cook only pizza....only cool your wine....only make pasta.....only cook rice....only do any of a thousands of other things.
Just tune them out and you'll go a long way towards being more fiscally fit as well as enjoy your life more if you're not chasing your tail with the next latest and greatest gadget.
We've done most everything we can do to eliminate useless ads from our "diet". We Tivo all our TV programming so we never have to endure ads, we're on every do not call list we can register for, we dropped our land phone line and went totally cellular, we're signed up on the list to eliminate direct junk mail, we never give out our phone number or address unless it's to someone we trust not to bother us. It really has helped too. I don't remember the last time I had to endure a telemarketing call or a TV ad etc...
Oh by the way....when we moved recently and needed to buy a new microwave, guess what was one of top things on our list of features of the microwave. Yup....you guessed it, one that beeped several times and shut off. Ahhhh life is good again !
Last edited by jasper1372; 01-08-2010 at 07:37 AM..
I can't leave my house for 5 seconds without being barraged by advertisement everywhere I go by billboards, radio ads, flyers, and people dressed up like giant chickens on street corners.
At home, the TV is equal parts adds and programming, Internet is pop-up hell, and even movies regularly imbed "secret" advertising and product hocking right into the story. People are always knocking on my door, cold-calling me and sending me emails trying to peddle their junk too. I'm sick of it!
When will enough be enough? Does it seem like there is more, harder and heavier advertising than before the economy went south? Why do we put up with it? Does everyone else see through the crude manipulation? There is so much more to life than stuff; why won't Americans demand more life and less advertising?
Well, get over it. Advertising fuels commerce. Without commerce, you don't have a job.
Radio and TV ads? How the heck do you think the programming is paid for? I don't know about you, but NPR and Public Television's offerings tend to get stale really, really quickly.
Telephone calls? Just put your number on the do-not-call registry. Then the only people calling you will be non-profits and politicians. Takes all of 20 seconds to do online.
Pop-up ads? My internet browser blocks them quite well. It takes approximately 1.5 seconds to turn on.
People knocking on your door? Tell them to go away. I find it hard to believe that you have a line of people at your door hocking stuff. I think the only people who ring my doorbell are the Girls Scouts and the Mormons. The Girl Scouts are once a year while the Mormons are about one year in every five.
As far as editorial content in newspapers, it's always been that way since the dawn of journalism. In fact, it used to be a lot more overt. You just haven't been paying attention.
You have no idea how livid I was when I purchased a DVD from the store and it had movie trailers that started on the disk before getting to the title/menu screen. This particular DVD had some feature that prevented fast-forwarding through the advertisements. Seriously now. I bought the DVD. There should be no ads on it.
I no longer do business with some online stores due to their harassing spam that they send. I purchase something, I uncheck the "send me advertisements box," yet they still send me advertisements. Then, I unsubscribe... and the next time I order, I'm back on that spam list again.
Ahhh, Chango, just one of the many joys of living in a capitalistic society.
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