Against advertising: Advertisers thrive on perpetuating a system that is ravaging the planet. We can do without them — and a lot of the junk they’re trying to sell us.

I think it's important to remember that advertising is not just a means to push immediate product consumption. Sure, that's definitely a major function of it, but all advertisers know they're playing a longer game than instant gratification.

Consider a hypothetical half-hour TV episode that jumps to commercials 3 times, showing 5 commercials each. That's 15 commercials within 30 minutes. Many of them might not even be directly relevant to you! Seems like a waste of effort, no? Does the average person go out and buy anything on a regular basis after watching ads from a TV show? Doubtful.

Instead, the ads serve larger purposes. They make sure that you know about a company, that you associate that company with a particular product or area, and that your image of the company is anchored to their standards. Here's a particularly good example I saw recently. Dior makes mass-produced perfumes sold in department stores, but its advertising unconditionally communicates that it's something indulgent, sensual, rich, mysterious, romantic, and freeing.

They're selling you on the fantasy and status, not the product itself, tethering the public's perception that this is a luxury brand and therefore worth top dollar. Much of advertising is about these intangibles. It's not that you're going to go out and buy Dior perfume after watching Natalie Portman make compelling faces at the camera through a series of jump cuts--it's that the ad itself conveys the image that Dior wants you and the rest of the world to have of it.

Take a look at the comments on the video. Few of them mention the perfume itself and instead focus on Portman, or the drama of the commercial, or its composition. Many of them express adoration. The advertisers who made this are going for exactly this response. It creates positive associations with Dior, which can persist long after the commercial fades from memory. Do this enough times and it creates the image of your brand which takes up space in the minds of all the people who've absorbed small yet potent, forgettable yet lasting messaging about your company.

Advertisers aren't playing for now, they're playing for the future. Rather than getting you to buy a bottle of perfume now, they want it to be that, should you decide to buy perfume somewhere down the road, Dior should be the first thing in your mind, and you should have a fond association with it. Furthermore, even if you decide to buy a bottle of perfume that isn't Dior, they've done enough to anchor their image to hopefully still have an effect. Maybe you get a cheaper brand and find out that it only makes you smell slightly better and doesn't make you sexy, capricious, flirty, fun, and carefree. Maybe, you might think, if you'd bought something with a little more luxury, like Dior, you'd feel those feelings you wanted--the very ones they planted there to not just promote themselves but poison the well for other perfumes.

Advertising feeds on a lot of things, but one of its main drivers is insecurity. Are any of the people interested in buying Dior perfume living a life the caliber of Natalie Portman? Not a chance. Not even Portman is living that life--it's entirely fabricated--but it creates a perception by which people compare themselves and inevitably come up short. You brought up Grammarly, which is another great example. Is it that people genuinely can't spell and don't know grammar, or is Grammarly's advertising creating subtle insecurity about mistakes you might e-mail to your coworkers or turn in to your professors? The narrative they put forth isn't necessarily reality, but if they can make you believe it, they can make it become reality. Create the need, then sell the solution.

I really can't relate or agree with this at all. I've bought countless things because of ads. I bought my mattress bc of an ad on a podcast I listen to. I started using a food delivery service for the same reason. It took me to the site I bought my last pair of shorts on. I started using grammerly because of a YouTube ad I saw. Pretty much every movie I've seen that was released in the last 5ish years I saw because of either an ad on YouTube or an preview before another movie. Do you think snuggies would have been nearly as popular as they were if they had no ads? There's an entire TV show about how effective ads are! I think it's wild that you think every company in the world pays as much money as they do for marketing and advertising without researching into if it works or if it is effective.

Advertising goes way beyond just the physical thing you see on the screen and your instant reaction. I feel advertisements have deeply manipulated society as a whole including myself. Since I got a job a few years ago I have had enough money to buy mostly any product I want. I find it really hard to resist buying unneeded luxury products.

There is a high end bike brand called Cervelo. I have never seen an actual advert for Cervelo bikes but I know about them from seeing them around outside and online conversations. Somehow the brand has made me aware of the ultra premium and desirableness of the product without ever directly contacting me. Only after hard work rationalising to myself that I don't need this, I already have a good bike and this is a waste of money have I been able to convince myself that I should not buy it.

I think advertising has been around us for so long that it has changed our way of thinking to make us want to spend lots of money on things we already have or don't need.

I'm pretty anti-advertising at the best of times but to play DA for a moment - you assume that just because you don't act on ads directly (or get convinced of the 'brand permanence'/soft appeals/etc) that they don't affect you, but the avenues you do act on for most of your purchases - word of mouth/recommendations, community feedback, etc - are all indirectly and significantly impacted by ad spend as well.

Most brands you probably use wouldn't exist if they cut off their ad spending and their competitors did not. It's an arms race without end.

Can we evolve harder, plz?

I don't think there's any more 'evolving' to do in that direction - ads represent the pinnacle of capitalistic greed - money rules, 'the market will decide who wins' and so on, then 'merica breaks up the monopolies (assuming we're ever going to get around to doing that again) and we briefly unclog the pipes and pretend the machine's running fine. Nothing short of a new direction (e.g. regulating away ads, because corporate greed would otherwise always ensure they exist) and as with everything, doing away with money indirectly buying politicians, currently through campaign finance (and IMO, removal of the current bought-in politicians) would affect any sort of change.

Whew, that got more political than I was intending.