It is now the information age. Advertising should be obsolete. If anybody finds that they need something, they can go seek it out in today’s Library of Alexandria. No longer should goods or services ever need to be dangled in front of faces everywhere in hopes that somebody somewhere will fall prey. Advertising is just an artifact from a world where it once wasn’t feasible for individuals to query nearly the entirety of human knowledge.
One of the main goals of advertising is to induce perceived inadequacy and leverage that pressure against targets to make purchases through the fear of missing out. By allowing this form of pschological attack into one’s life, one is tacitly giving up a portion of their own autonomy. Call me crazy, but I’d argue that this is a form of indirect mind control. Terms like “manipulative adverstising” are hilarious because they insinuate that there is some kind of advertising that isn’t manipulative.
And to those who argue that they are immune to advertising because they’re aware of it or “It just makes me not want to buy the product!”: It isn’t about making you like or dislike anything. Marketers just want to get you thinking about it at all. Familiarity is what drives an idea into conversation. Familiarity is what subconciously tips the scales when deciding between otherwise identical options. Familiarity stays in the back of your mind until that day you forget you even saw some annoying commercial.
So here’s a better solution: block that shit. For anyone who isn’t already aware, there are very powerful tools available to cleanse ads out of your online experience. uBlock Origin is a fantastic set-and-forget addon which can also optionally block any page element you so desire. Or for a more proactive approach, uMatrix can be configured to block everything by default leaving you to decide which parts of a web page are allowed through the castle gates.