Ranting About Advertisements

[mishalak]

If I were God-Emperor the very first thing I would outlaw all television, newspaper, movie, radio, email, and mail advertising. Yes I realize this would mean an end of most television and radio. And I am also aware that it would cause severe problems for magazines and newspapers. I think that this corporate propagandizing is so bad for society that it might accurately be described as evil, a word I do not use lightly in this context.

It might be acceptable for companies to advertise if they were restricted to using realistic images. For example not being allowed to use thin glue instead of actual milk to make it look better on camera. No airbrushing and only being allowed to use people who actually use the product as directed to look like that.

The trouble I see with that is that it would be so complex to regulate and litigate that is might take as many people as takes to run the whole of the US Army. And the whole game is a zero sum thing for consumers. It isn't as if advertising costs aren't passed on to consumers generally inflating the price of nearly everything. Money that might (or might not if I'm completely wrong as is not uncommon) be spent on making products work better, improve looks, or just cost less.

Perhaps all companies, large or small, would be limited to the same small budget. I'm not sure. Perhaps if I could get advisors to help me decide if I actually had this power. But in any case I regard advertising as being very, very bad indeed for society.

Comments

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Why do you think advertising is evil? I don't like being surrounded by input that it's best to ignore, and I think there's something wrong with people who are producing stuff that people are obviously working hard to not see (the evidence is clear on tv ads), but what's your line of thought?

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

First reason, advertising is like a cold war. If one side, a company with a product, advertises making their product look sexy/better/etc they will get more sales than competitors. So the competitors all put on advertising as well and this either slows or keeps the erosion of market share from happening. So all this money gets spent upon changing almost nothing. This does not leave prices unaffected. The reason that house brands of products are so much less expensive than the national brands is not because they use shoddy inputs. Indeed often they use BETER ingredients and yet they cost less. This is due in large part to advertising inflating the price of products.

Secondly advertising is inherently bad for people because it is giving warped views of life as true over and over again and it has been shown that no matter how educated a person is this still has an effect. Though of course it is even worse for people who've never been taught to think critically of advertising. We're told to be afraid of germs to sell us air sanitizer, anti-bacterial soap, products with bleach, and everything else when unless a person is immune depressed it's better for that person to only use such things occasionally. And that's just one example of a galaxy of problems caused by advertising endlessly telling people to be afraid and unhappy with their lives without a Ronco plum splucher. It is part of making societies full of consumer goods without being happy.

Thirdly is the essentially dead letter nature of truth in advertising. All the time I see ads for products that I know do not work at all. The abercizers, the hair removal foam, the Ronco junk, the no money down investment systems, gold investments, day trading, and everything else shown on late night television especially in "infomercials". One part of this is just companies coming into existence and pulling up stakes so fast that regulators can't ding them with fines, but the other part is that as long as they have some itty bitty disclaimer they can go right on LYING because of goofy interpretations of free speech. Everyone, even educated people, tend to believe things they hear from authoritative voices or in print as being true so if people are allowed to repeat lies often enough then eventually even smart people will believe them some of the time. That's morally and ethically wrong and it should not be allowed.

Fourthly advertising, television advertising in particular, is the reason politics is so expensive in America and is a primary culprit in making politics a corrupt process. And just as with the other advertising it doesn't convey useful information, it conveys fear and lies that help stampede people into making very poor choices on issues, liberal or conservative.

Fifthly having all this "free" television is bad for society and advertising pays it for. Maybe if given the choice people would watch just as much TV if they had to pay for programming, but I would hope they would watch less. But that's way down the list from those other things that I mentioned earlier.

For all these reasons I regard advertising of all sorts as an unmitigated ill for society that should be greatly reduced or eliminated.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Alternate theory about politics: Once upon a time, people listened to political speeches for the fun of it. Then (I am told), people decided that rhetoric was just a way of making pretty lies, and they quit using and teaching it. Instead of more truth, we ended up with really boring lies and political campaigns determined by advertising money.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

That doesn't sound at all correct. That sounds like a bitter educator lamenting the end of classical education.

It is true that politicians were paid attention to. But that was prior to the growth of other celebrities. It was no more an education choice than the end of most circuses was the result of changing education choices. Television and other forms of entertainment were the same cause. Why go out to see people tumbling in a big dusty tent when you could stay in? Likewise why go listen to a speech when you could stay in and watch Dragnet or whatever? I've no doubt it was not just TV, after all in the early days TV showed whole convention speeches. But things changed as networks squeezed down news and the value of advertising went up. Eventually TV was more entertainment and a lot less education because given a choice more people will pick that.

[trickofthedark.livejournal.com]

My husband and I make our bread and butter making art for advertisements. If you outlawed our livelihood, we (and all the other commercial artists in the world) would rise up and smite you.

If you don't like ads, you might try not watching TV. That's what I do.
In the same way that anti-porn people should simply not look at porn, instead of attempting to regulate my right to create it...

Free will, while not pretty, is at the very least, free.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

This isn't all about me, even though I started it off as a god emperor type fantasy. I don't actually watch much television, as there isn't a lot on that I want to watch and I'm too Scottish to get cable. Besides there isn't much good on cable either for the price. But I'm all digressed from my point about outlawing it as God-Emperor being obviously over the top rhetoric as it is terribly unlikely that I'll be crowned or that if I was that I wouldn't take it a lot more seriously than I do when I'm ranting about how bad something is.

What I'm ranting about is the outright or lies by implication. Humans are not just rational beings, we also still just talking monkeys. Every last one of us including myself, I'm not some brilliant god that Spock like is unaffected by peer pressure, the enticements of sex, and the other things used in advertising to get us to do things. The industry claims that it can manipulate people into thinking they need things they don't. Either they're wrong and for some reason they're able to fool big companies into thinking they're right or else they really can manipulate people and it's now a good idea to let them say anything they please.

It's rather like tobacco farming. I don't see anything wrong with the growing of tobacco or even smoking it. I don't see those that do the growing as being bad. But down the line where tobacco becomes cigarettes and those are given an image of cool by advertising and product placement it goes all wrong. Reducing rates of smoking through campaigning against it is a good thing in my opinion, but it hurts the innocent tobacco farmer who's just trying to make an honest living back in N. Carolina.

I honestly did not want to hurt your feelings if I did so. But I'm not a Republican, I don't believe that totally free unregulated markets are a good thing and so the free will argument doesn't work on me. I think advertisement needs a lot more regulating than it has and I was trying to say so in a silly over the top way. I guess my attempt at humor to lighten the thing up at the start wreaked my point.

[trickofthedark.livejournal.com]

Hee! My feelings are not hurt and I'm not a Repulican. I'm simply pointing out to you that blanket black and white statements tend to be too overreaching to work.

In my opinion better education of children to think for themselves would solve the problem very nicely and be cheaper, easier to implement than ad regulation, more successful and not destroy the livelihoods of millions of artists. And since I'm a liberal, I'd happily pay taxes for that. And that's paying for other people's children even, since I won't be having any.

But I certainly would fight for the right to create porn, un-liked art, and whatever else that whoever doesn't approve of and flog my crappy products on the unsuspecting public. =)

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

If the education worked the artists would be out of work anyway because advertizing would stop working and so companies would stop paying for it.

[trickofthedark.livejournal.com]

Seriously? You seriously think that education would *prevent* people from buying products which had good package design, lovely signage and classy ads? Because in my experience, the educated people are the ones who know how to pick out the quality stuff. Being educated does not prevent a person from needing to buy things.

Sure, education might prevent people from buying evil, unethical, unhealthy, eco-unfriendly items. But I see no way that education would prevent people from appreciating good package design and finding good products through informative, well produced ads.

Perhaps when you use the word 'education' you mean something entirely different from what I mean. 'Indoctrination' maybe? Yeah, that might work. But then, still with the smiting.

[ajournalguy.livejournal.com]

At the risk of arousing the Wrath of Mishalak(TM), "Freedom is not free."

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Okay. Well I don't like trite slogans like that which are usually said to stir up people to die for an idea which isn't even defined, but how does that arouse my wrath? Do you think that it somehow blows away my argument? My slogans in response are:

I'd like to know what you mean by freedom before we start paying for it, because too often its slavery for someone that is labeled and sold as "freedom".

Freedom of Speech is too often confused with the freedom the lie, dissemble, and obfuscate as advertizers do for nearly everyone.

[ajournalguy.livejournal.com]

Actually, I was arguing on your side, but that's exactly why I was concerned: my use of a particularly trite ad campaign slogan to make my point in your anti-advertising thread.