[Mechanical9]

There's a necessity in society for some form of advertising. People and businesses want to communicate what products and services are available. If a random person wants the ability to start their own business, they're going to need the ability to advertise that they have a new product that they want people to try. Or they want to advertise that there's some societal issue that they want people to be aware of.

Consider a world with zero ads. There wouldn't be annoying interruptions. But we also wouldn't ever learn which new movies are playing, which political candidates are running, etc, except from 2nd and 3rd hand sources with several layers of spin (and misunderstanding/misinformation) on the information.

I personally hate the current state of direct advertising. There seems to be zero prevention of fraud and zero work towards making ads less annoying. I wish that consensual forms of media could convey all that information instead, in an unbiased, informed, and timely manner. Unfortunately that isn't currently happening for several reasons (media underfunding, editorial conflicts of interest, personalized content streams that preclude any sort of unexpected news).

I'm not sure what the solution is overall. I think if every company didn't deliver absolute buckets of trash to their own email marketing lists, then we wouldn't block them and they wouldn't have to pay to ruin our other media.

[flir]

> Consider a world with zero ads. There wouldn't be annoying interruptions. But we also wouldn't ever learn which new movies are playing

Pull, not push. If I want to know once I'll look it up. If I want to be reminded regularly I'll subscribe to their new movie feed.

[jackthetab]

Non-flamebait question: But how do you know to look it up in the first place? Word of mouth from friends or reviewers, i.e. influencers?

Unless we're defining "ads" to mean "interstitial video|aural ads", then I'll concede the point.

[tomjen3]

If I want to know what movies are playing, I can ask the cinema. This is far more effective for the both of us.

If I want to know who is running for election, this is similarily available.

As for social issues? Being able to afford to make noise has proven a drastically inferior barrier than I need.

[vel0city]

If I only know about what movies are coming out is by asking the cinema, I'm probably going to miss out on a lot of movies I'll probably enjoy, unless I make quite the habit of asking the cinema on a very regular basis.

[edgyquant]

>There's a necessity in society for some form of advertising

Objectively false

[gdulli]

The best concert I ever saw (Nightmares on Wax) was one I only knew was going to be in town from a TV commercial. I don't follow concert news.

I realized recently that I only ever see blockbuster movies anymore because I've hardcore eliminated advertising from my life. I don't know what movies are coming out anymore if they're not huge and mainstream. That's kind of a bummer. Movie trailers were one kind of commercial I did like.

Advertising mostly sucks, yes, but like all takes you can be too extremist about it. Sometimes an advertiser's interests align with mine. Maybe I should know the full range of products and services available. I'm not going to forget that the advertiser's message is biased.

By blocking all advertising from my life I've introduced a different kind of bias into my choices.