Yes. You see, I'm a noncomformist and you've been brainwashed by the man.
Advertising has an use - Supporting media. I'm just saying it's invasive and yes, parasitical - Advertisers produce nothing of value, 70~90% of the time. Some ads, in fact, have negative value - Society in some places is prepared to pay a cost in jobs and profit to get rid of billboard ads, and people sell website subscriptions that do nothing but remove the ads - "Not seeing ads" adds value to a product. Of course you shouldn't ever take a broad generalisation to mean that there are no exceptions, but the majority of advertisement is a parasitical thing.

And seriously... I understand that you're using shampoo as an example, but some things are plainly living essentials. People learn about those things - Clothing, food, hygiene products - when they're children, from their parents, not from advertisement. Advertisement spreads word of new products, or products which aren't lucky enough to be household names that are part of our culture.


That's a variation on the Nurenberg defense. Just because someone does it for a living doesn't make it ethical. Of course, there are nuances and shades here - Not every advertising company is in the business of abusing people's minds, and please don't lump me with the nuts who think they're putting subliminal messages in Coke cans. Hell, people who create TV ads that are actually entertaining are in fact producing something of value - But they're a sad minority, to the point that even marginally funny ads get anthologized in TV shows.

I'm afraid I haven't seen that, so you'll have to enlighten me. Or not, if that's what you want. Corporate droid.

Verithrax has a point. Sometimes ads exist just to fulfill the ad market. I think people eventually tune out to ads, because it ads noise to the signal. I see ads as a necessary evil for most entertainment content out there. But I do get concerned, especially where kids are concerned. Kids today care a lot more about fashion then they did like when I was growing up. Back in my time, we didn't care what we wore, now kids know brand names and want to wear the cool clothes--that used to not happen until people hit puberty. I blame the ad companies for that.

(Though I'm surprised Verithrax is so adamant against ads since he once tried to endorse putting "phantom links" in web boards (an Idea Visaeris tried to put in an argument he and I had in idiots), where you would link a few hidden letters and that would lead you to the Ilyrias MUD he was working on. That seems a bit hypocritical to me).

Oooh, I love it when you take opportunities to fling spurious insults around.

Phantom links aren't advertisement... nor are they phantom, since anyone can see what a link is, you can see where a link leads, you have to consciously choose to click them, and they don't change the content or value of a message, except by showing some characters as randomly underlined. They are not ads.

So you're saying putting links like this to Lusternia is okay.

I'm just pointing out how hypocritical that is. That's using the same type of moral tactics you seem to abhor, except when it benefits yourself.

Er, no. If I embeded an YouTube video in my signature, that is advertisement. If I put up a banner, that is advertisement. If I throw in random links, that is infantile but perfectly fine.

Aside from being infantile, of course.


Verithrax.. what have you done to my thread. When I left it, it was happy and content.. and now it's full of argument and bitterness. I blame you.

Now, I have become Troll, the destroyer of threads.

Blame the parents. Doing anything else is pretty stupid. Kids learn these things from their peers and their parents. They're also the ones buying it. And sure there is the verge of ridiculousness, but having nice looking, well-made clothes is perfectly fine.

Hidden links is advertisement, I'm not quite sure how you can say it isn't.

I currently work in the advertising industry in a slightly different medium. (we create games which people put on thier websites for free which contain ideas and words associated with a product). For example, I recently had the worst thing I ever had to work on, where in the AOL NEWS QUIZ section of their website, we had to take their quiz UI and change it to look like Windows Vista. On top of that, AOL sold ad overt ads on the windowsized quiz. Since working on that project, I have noticed many other places were Microsoft obviously payed some tech support companies to use the slogan "wow" while mentioning vista. In a few months I will imagine that a person can not use the word "Wow" in conversation without eliciting a thought about Windows from the people who here it.

If you think Windows and "Wow" association is stupid, or if you are against it and hate microsoft because of it, then Microsoft has achieved their goals. Also, if you are impressed and honestly think that Vista has its "wow moment" then they have also achieved their goals.

Back in the 1950s people did not know as much about the subconsious affects of advertising on people, and they focused mostly on memorable pleasant jingles that people could sing as well as authoritarian "proof" for their product working. (This would follow how Verithrax seems to be arguing his point, as if we still lived in the 50s).. However, by the 1980s they realized that all you need is product recognition to have advertising be worth it, and you saw a large rise in "annoying" commercials. Ads that were made specifically to shock, annoy, or otherwise jar you in some way so that the experience of the name would be associated in your sub conscious as something unique.

It is often for this reason that the most famous and well received "super bowl commercials" were not easily identifiable with what product they were selling. Anheiser Bush commercials are most famous for this.

This is starting to remind me of the rants of Feminists saying, "You don't really think a pretty woman will like you if you drink beer, do you?"... As if thats what anybody actively thinks when seeing such a comercial. Rather, their minds associate the product name with the experience of viewing the pretty woman. Its all about mental association, which has been dubbed "product recognition."

Because it isn't advertising anything. It's a link. That's like saying alleys that lead to a store are advertisement for that store.
So their goal is to make people hate him for picking a dumb slogan? What the hell kind of idiotic corporate agenda is that? Product recognition is meaningless if people remember your product as something they'd rather avoid.

I'd argue that advertisement was better in the 50's, because it wasn't trying to mess with people's heads, but that wouldn't be true - Your time frame is wrong. Go do your homework.

Which is why it's unethical; you're screwing with people's unconscious reactions here, and advertisers do that quite deliberately.

You would pass by an alley to a store every time you were in the region. Someone deliberately has to put a link there for you to click on it and go down it. You're being kind of disingenuous there.

Stores often pay big money for busy locations. The more you pass by the store the more you remember it and the more you want to go in.

As for advertising, It gains most of it's tactics from Pavlov's dogs.

I said an alley... the point being that you wouldn't see the store unless you deliberately walked down it to look at the other side.

I'm disappointed no one has brought up Hitler yet.

I can bring up a Goebbels comparison, would that suffice?

*stands ready to invoke Godwin's law*

Advertisers today shamelessly use the same methods Joseph Goebbels did in 1930's Germany, and are, generally speaking, no better than him and just as prone to using the Nurenberg defense to justify their actions.