I had similar thinking about how alien that would be in a previous discussion around service culture in the US vs. Germany.

In the US, it is expected that employees in service businesses (think coffee shops, grocery stores, etc.) put on a smiling face and pretend to love their jobs. In Germany, I was told that is unheard of because it is thought of as inhumane to force someone to pretend they love their job like that. So as a result you get some less-than-enthusiastic responses from those employees.

I encountered this a bit in a coffee shop in Vienna and it was stark to say the least.

If I had to work a shit job like grocery store clerk, I'd much prefer an ineffectual dolt of a boss telling me to smile than I would a German realist boss telling me a smile isn't a requirement of my employment.

Or you'll have an American realist Walmart boss telling you to "cheer" up. I see it as unvalued emotional labor, and degrading to those who do it as they are non-negotiably expected to do it.

Some people are into this, and some aren't -- but if you are poor and working retail, then you must smile and sometimes sing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOkQJm_UGM4

I have hard time to see how being nice to people is "degrading". Is it somehow assumed that only assholes are real decent people and anyone who is nice to the clients is automatically degrading themselves?

Yes, I get it - working as a clerk in a store like Walmart is not the most luxurious job in the world. But I, as a client, is not at fault that the clerk is not a billionaire hedge fund manager (neither am I btw). On the contrary, the money that I bring in are partially paying his - admittedly, far from luxurious, but still nonzero - salary. He is not forced to work this job, he could leave at any moment (he'd have to give up the salary of course). So is it really too much to expect some nice disposition towards customers which pay your living? I really don't understand how it's unreasonable and "degrading" to expect that. Singing maybe going too far (OTOH, the video looks like a dreaded "teambuilding exercise", that's the whole other story), but a nice smile?

>"He is not forced to work this job, he could leave at any moment (he'd have to give up the salary of course)."

A couple points worth mentioning:

1. For most retail clerks, the choice to leave is often "stay in a shitty job I hate" vs. "become homeless and starve (and potentially my family as well) because there is a lack of other jobs, high competition for them, and I live paycheck-to-paycheck because the jobs I can get pay minimum wage with no benefits."

2. It might be different overseas, but in the US at least the vast majority of retail clerks are paid hourly at the minimum wage. In fact, many retail employers do their best to have managers play games with people's scheduled hours to keep them under the amount that triggers benefits and overtime.

So in many (dare I say most?) cases, yes, it is too much to expect some nice disposition by default. That said, I would hope most people, when treated nicely by customers with realistic expectations, would respond in-kind.

Being nice to people isn't degrading (in fact, it's uplifting.) Being required to pretend to be nice or else is degrading.

Also, you can be nice to people without pretending to feel happy all the time, such as by smiling or singing. Being nice could mean efficiently executing their duties.

I'm not sure why talking about emotional labor, smiling and singing, suddenly brought on doubts about decency, niceness, and assholeness in the following reply. I see that as very stressful expectations to have for somebody.

Smiling is a communication of internal feelings. It puts pressure on me as the customer as well when I know my mere presence is an on-button for an emotional act for people. How draining for both parties.

> Or you'll have an American realist Walmart boss telling you to "cheer" up.

I don't think that video exemplifies the American stereotype you think it does:

1. One of the people recording this was singing sarcastically-- purposefully off key, and in a tone that clearly signals to other Americans that he is mocking the thing he is being made to do. He also posted it on Youtube to criticize Walmart.

2. Most of the people aren't really participating. Look at that person who is literally an aisle away from the action! There's also a group just watching the person who isn't in uniform make yet another recording.

3. Do you really think the guy forced to play the lead Walmart cheerleader to that un-licensed Queen ripoff is a realist? Do you think he feels anything but shame and embarrassment that his most famous moment is a pathetic (and ineffectual) attempt to wring a tiny bit more productivity out of his no-benefits part-time staff?

4. Have you ever been to a Walmart? The cashiers at Walmart don't smile, and rarely look up at you.

Compare to:

"Guten Morgen. Your corporate overlords have seen fit to allow you to be the only unionized Walmart in the world for another day. So give thanks, and continue not smiling as that would otherwise betray a transcendental lie. That's the German Walmart Guarantee!"

edit: forgot that German nouns are capitalized

I don't think this is necessarily American, but more indicative of the relationship between employer and employee at a low SES level. My point was to show that militaristic German vs. relaxed "dolt" American wasn't the right framing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKd2unIg5Rk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Njp7ZPeUy2w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk7qF2eXkgQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53AAezi_R8U

The first video isn't in English, and is indicative of reach.

Haha, that video is pathetic.

https://youtu.be/Z8zNsUTWsOc

Agreed. A friend mocked British service standards the other day and I said that this showed people hadn't completely given up. It's a form of resistance.

I have oft said that the people who give me dour customer service (which is a lot) have been to the Huddersfield School of Customer Service.

Disclaimer: I live in Huddersfield and it is sometimes grim up north.

Advertising is a fact of life, though. Without it, there's no way to inform potential customers of a new brand or product.

I mean, imagine if it all disappeared tomorrow. Wouldn't people just stick to the megacorps and established brands they already know? Wouldn't this make it even that much tougher for a Netflix to compete with a Comcast, or an Uber/Lyft to compete with an entrenched taxi industry? How would Dollar Shave Club possibly compete with Gillette?

I don't like ads, either, but the alternative is worse. It just seems unrealistic. I know it could be done--I just don't think it'd bring about some post-materialist society. It'd just allow us to pat ourselves on the back while making it that much tougher to start a business and compete against existing businesses.

It's a matter of push versus pull though. If I know I want a product, I can search for reviews and recommendations, (half of which I assume are astroturfed, but I'm counting those as "ads" which would disappear in this hypothetical.)

How will I promote my new movie? Or book? How would I know to search for a Netflix or Uber or Dollar Shave Club or Game of Thrones?

I wouldn't, until someone else told me about it. And they wouldn't tell me about it unless they found out somehow. And how could you possibly differentiate between grassroots interest and astroturfing, particularly online?

Besides, how many months go by with you happily using your razor before you sit down to research whether there are better options? The vast majority of people choose to spend their time on more important things, thus further entrenching the status quo.

It'd only make all the things people hate about megacorps worse. We've already got this dearth of creativity and risk-taking in Hollywood. Imagine how much worse it'd be if they couldn't advertise something new!

It seems to me like reviews and word-of-mouth can and already do a good job of all this. When I find out about new things, it's generally through social networks. And when I'm looking to buy something new I usually look for reviews.

> How will I promote my new movie? Or book?

The same way that people do today. Talk shows, trailers (which you let people organically share, rather than paying to put it in front of people), movie/book reviewers.

> Besides, how many months go by with you happily using your razor before you sit down to research whether there are better options?

I feel like you're countering your own point here. Buying a new razor when you're already happy with the one you're using is exactly the kind of consumerism that advertising encourages.

> We've already got this dearth of creativity and risk-taking in Hollywood. Imagine how much worse it'd be if they couldn't advertise something new!

I disagree. Imagine if advertising didn't exist, and the only way to get the word out about new movies was through movie reviews, and so studios were actually encouraged to make good movies. I think we would have a lot less riding on established IP.

> It seems to me like reviews and word-of-mouth can and already do a good job of all this.

They do now, as part of a society that includes advertising. That word of mouth comes as a result of people being aware of things. Reviewers focus on reviewing things people are interested in reading about. All of these benefit from advertising.

> Talk shows, trailers (which you let people organically share, rather than paying to put it in front of people), movie/book reviewers.

We're going to get in pretty deep if people appearing on talk shows to promote something doesn't count as an advertisement.

Even trailers have to be promoted somehow. They run the trailers in ads because they're effective! They're effective because a significant chunk of people wouldn't have seen the movie, who otherwise would have if they had known about it. They would have known about it if the general word of mouth and close friends on social networks were enough. But it isn't. Clearly reviews and word of mouth are not sufficient.

> I feel like you're countering your own point here. Buying a new razor when you're already happy with the one you're using is exactly the kind of consumerism that advertising encourages.

Me continuing to drive to a Target to pay $7 for a four-blade razor with special proprietary blade cartridges because I assume better options don't exist due to not spending time researching the purchase is not reduced materialism or consumerism. It's just protecting the status quo.

> I disagree. Imagine if advertising didn't exist, and the only way to get the word out about new movies was through movie reviews, and so studios were actually encouraged to make good movies. I think we would have a lot less riding on established IP.

Putting aside that movie reviews are not as inherently separate from advertising as you're suggesting, I totally disagree. Only a small subset of moviegoers actually read reviews ahead of time and use that to influence a decision. We'd only see more people showing up to see brands they already know well (e.g. Star Wars, Transformers) and less likely to attend movies they've heard / seen nothing about. The people who don't value reviews won't suddenly start valuing them, and the gap between "things movie critics like" and "thing general moviegoers like" won't close.

Same with buying a soda from a company other than Coke/Pepsi. Same with buying an unknown shampoo brand, or an unknown car brand, etc. Except it's really even worse in other industries because people aren't looking for or expecting a new shampoo. And so we just stick to whatever we've been buying, even if it's some huge megacorp milking their brand because competitors have no platform to make the case that they're better.

>They do now, as part of a society that includes advertising. That word of mouth comes as a result of people being aware of things.

Word of mouth has worked fine long before mass media advertising became a thing.

Is our society and economy dependant on advertising? Absolutely. Has it always been this way, and must it always be this way? Not so much.

I agree with you. Obviously I'm against manipulative, deceptive and obnoxious advertising but it's beneficial to consumers and companies for consumers to find out about new products through ads that will save them time, save them money, be enjoyable etc.

It doesn't seem realistic at all to me that someone would invest piles of money into a product that solved a problem people didn't know they have or significantly improves on an existing product where you're only route to communicate this with customers would be to ask for reviews, hope that your target market actively looks for reviews and hope word of mouth spreads.

Don't we hear all the time on hackernews about how building a great product isn't enough if you don't have a marketing strategy?

I find it hard how you can disagree with ads for entertainment especially. Why would you be against knowing a sequel to a movie or game you like but don't actively follow just came out?

There must be some happy middle ground between obnoxious privacy invading ads and no ads at all.

advertising works in favor of the system/status quo/megacorps. not the little guy.

Ads on tv do not show new things. They push brand. brand is mother, brand is father.

I remember ads 25 years ago would show new things constantly---usually for local companies as well, because TV and Newspaper advertisement was basically the only way to let people know that you opened a new store, or were doing a sale for XYZ products.

Those kind of advertisements are actionable, and the supplier wants to see metrics on how much impact a single advertisement had. In today's era, metrics are much easily found from online advertisement, and so businesses have gravitated to those, and most notably Google search ads.

I guess to me that comes off as a meaningless platitude. Ads on TV (and other mediums) absolutely do show new things, including each of the things I noted in the very comment you responded to.

Megacorps benefit from pushing brand, but they'd benefit even more from nobody being able to push brand, because they already have one established.

no platitudes around here. you can't deny (well you can but you shouldn't) that the vast majority of ads are all brand.

Not talking about absolutes or semantics but:

Without the Big Advertising people would drift off-brand. maybe boredom, maybe trying what their friend uses, maybe (surely not) be affected by price and quality.

> Ads on tv do not show new things. They push brand. brand is mother, brand is father.

This is a platitude.

> you can't deny (well you can but you shouldn't) that the vast majority of ads are all brand.

Maybe it is--it's just meaningless to my point. Even if 99% of ads are all entrenched megacorps reminding people they exist, that other 1% could be Netflix disrupting Comcast, or Uber/Lyft disrupting taxis, or whatever else. Those disruptors who were previously unknown benefit much more from their advertising than Coke reminding people to not stop buying Coke.

> Without the Big Advertising people would drift off-brand. maybe boredom, maybe trying what their friend uses, maybe (surely not) be affected by price and quality.

Imagine how much more effective that off-brand would be if it could tell consumers about its lower price or higher quality, rather than having to just hope they found out somehow... versus a known competitor and brand.

>Imagine how much more effective that off-brand would be if it could tell consumers about its lower price or higher quality, rather than having to just hope they found out somehow... versus a known competitor and brand.

imagine you have an army of 100 and you are against an army of 1000.

now imagine how much more effective you would be if everyone had machine guns instead of swords.

I'm not so sure that's the analogy you're after. You'd have a much, much better chance of winning with the guns, unless you're fighting on a perfectly flat field (in which case you're toast either way). I don't think I've ever seen a realistic example of somebody managing to take out two people at once in a sword fight, let alone 10.

> Without it, there's no way to inform potential customers of a new brand or product.

What about word of mouth, observing other people, searching for a product online?

Word of mouth is not enough for a 300-million market. Yet less observing other people, especially as many things aren't very observable. And to search for a product online, you need to know it exists and you want it. Nobody searched for iPhones before Apple started advertising them.

It seems to me that the solution is not to ban advertisement but only certain kinds of them such as ones containing strong emotional (Ads guilting people into buying insurance) or aspirational content (won't you look so cool if you lived 'The Marlboro Life')

That seems like a can of worms to me.

I have no TV. When I see an advert if I'm round someone's house or something like this, when you have not seen adverts for a while, they just look ridiculous. Some person telling you with utmost urgency about something so trivial.

I don't know why this is, but when you step back and are not used to adverts, when you do see them they just seem so transparently pathetic.

I turn the sound off when ads come on. I am always completely bewildered by them.

Used to do that too, when I was watching TV. It's strange how the perspective changes with no sound. You can block your sight by looking elsewhere, but you can't stop from hearing an open TV or radio. If you cut the sound, you cut their teeth.

> Image a day in your life without coming across an ad

I have had such days. I read a lot of stuff online, and I have adblockers. My entertainment is supplied by books and TV, where I watch either channels like Netflix or recorded shows, where I can skip through commercials. It's not exactly not encountering ads - and I surely encounter billboards when I drive around (though I don't think I can recall any of them, the mind filters them out by now), but it's pretty close and I'm sure I've had days where I didn't see ads. The thing is, they didn't feel much different from the days where I saw some.

> society, that overproduces things and where a large part of your survival depends on your skill to sell

That is preferable to the society which underproduces things and where large part of your survival depends on you skill in finding how to satisfy basic needs - food, shelter, etc. I'd rather watch ads than be hungry. My deepest hope is to always live in the former kind of society - where productivity is so high that it's ok to spend resources on convincing people to consume stuff. I've lived in another kind of society - where people spend resources on finding way to get decent food, clothes, books, etc. and where ads convincing people to consume some luxurious goods could not be taken but as a cruel joke. I'd much rather take the overproducing one.

>(though I don't think I can recall any of them, the mind filters them out by now),

Oh no no no. That is not how that works. Coca cola doesn't put up signs, ads, billboards, coaters and napkin holders with their logo on it to get you to stop and think about coca cola.

No. What they do it place their logo next to something that seems happy. Next to someone smiling or put it up in situations where people are happy. Relaxing on a beach? Coca cola flag. Sitting in a cafe with friends? Coca cola coasters sitting on the table.

Slowly but surely, your mind will associate Coca cola with happiness and relaxing.

And when that moment comes when you feel down. Your mind will think. I don't want to feel down. I want to feel happy.

I want happy. I want cola.

There is no such thing as 'filtering' out ads. They are not hoping you can recall them. They are designed to infiltrate your subconscious.

> Slowly but surely, your mind will associate Coca cola with happiness and relaxing.

Not really. My mind associates Coca cola with high blood sugar, diabetes and horrible tasting sugar water that would take decades off my life expectancy. Looks like I'm doing something wrong.

> There is no such thing as 'filtering' out ads.

I'm pretty sure there is, based on my own experience.

> They are designed to infiltrate your subconscious.

It's a vacuous claim - by definition, it is impossible to know what is in my "subconscious", so there's no way to disprove whether something "infiltrated" it.

Friend, you are dangerously naive.

I don't have time to write a big long thing about how wrong you are right now, but I'll provide this though:

Santa Claus is a Coke Ad. http://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/coke-lore-santa-clau...

> Friend, you are dangerously naive.

Tell it to me when I start drinking that colored sugar water. Since I stopped doing it 15 years ago, the thought of it still disgusts me. Maybe I need to give it more time to work...

> Santa Claus is a Coke Ad

For you, maybe. Most people have no idea about that, admittedly fascinating, bit of trivia. The article is called "Things You Never Knew" - and for a reason. It's hard for an ad to work if nobody has any idea what it is advertising. Ah, but of course - it's "subconscious", so all normal laws of the universe are suspended and magic is real.

That version of Santa Claus may have started that way, but it isn't any longer. Kids will grow up today never knowing that it is a Coke advert and will never associate the two until they learn the truth at a later stage of life.

And that version of Santa Claus was still based on fictional folk characters from history.

My point is two-fold: 1. There exists a sophisticated art and science of "subconscious" and it's used extensively in the advertising industry. 2. Even if you isolate yourself from ads personally, there is a huge and largely inescapable effect from rampant commercial advertising.

If the fact that a soda company can suborn an ancient figure like Saint Nick so completely that no one remembers it happened doesn't drive the point home then consider this: Diamond engagement rings are a deliberately ad-created "tradition".

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/ho...

I'm not disagreeing with any of that.

I'm just supporting what the other poster said about advertising not always having the intended effect.

There are some brands I actively avoid simply because I didn't like their advertisements, or how often they advertise and others where no amount of advertising will convince me to use their product (like Coke for example, because I think it tastes vile and I know it's basically just unhealthy sugar water).

Ah, cheers. I think I was a little worked up yesterday. ;-)

And I agree with you about advertising and unintended effects. To me modern life seems more and more like a giant open-ended experiment, one with no control group...

That's interesting. Any good book on that topic that you would recommend?

Food and Shelter don't need advertisements. Hamburger Helper and Mariott need advertisements. Advertisements don't help finding a realtor or choosing a store to shop food for at. Advertisements don't help in acquiring clothes. Capitalism did all these things with very little help from modern advertisement since the "invention" of capital.

>I've lived in another kind of society - where people spend resources on finding way to get decent food, clothes, books, etc.

How would overt modern advertising have fixed that? Do you think we don't spend resources on having the advertising find us instead of us finding the products? Does advertising even help with finding decent food, are lies forbidden when you advertise?

There's a wide gulf between advertising you have the cheapest apples in town on a sign in front of your store and advertising Red Lobster's Lobsterfest. Capitalism works fine under either example though.

> Capitalism did all these things with very little help from modern advertisement since the "invention" of capital.

Media advertising exists at least since 18th century (in our common modern understanding, commercial and political writings that can be reasonably considered ads were found on the walls of Pompeii, and probably exist since writing was invented). So there pretty much was never a period where modern capitalism existed and advertising didn't.

> How would overt modern advertising have fixed that?

It is not fixing that, it is a direct and inevitable result of abundance of resources. If you have surplus of resources available for consumption, you will need to choose which ones to consume. Thus, advertising - i.e. speech that is intended to make you to choose one particular resource - becomes profitable.

> Does advertising even help with finding decent food

Depends on advertising. Some does, some doesn't.

> That is preferable to the society which underproduces things and where large part of your survival depends on you skill in finding how to satisfy basic needs - food, shelter, etc. I'd rather watch ads than be hungry.

And that is perfectly correct. One thing I might add is that capitalism looks much like communism in the long run as companies merge, fuse and become bigger and bigger, because centralisation and control are the key for efficiency. Wasn't it in the news recently? One of the biggest companies on this planet on a mission to get a share of every transaction on this planet.

> is that capitalism looks much like communism in the long run

Not sure what you mean here. In the long run, any communist country has ended up either being completely ruined (USSR, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea) or turning back to capitalism (China, Viet Nam, East Europe). Surely capitalism's track record is not that sordid.

> as companies merge, fuse and become bigger and bigger

Companies also break up and whither away.

> because centralisation and control are the key for efficiency

Only for very narrow understanding of efficiency, taken as saving money on very mundane tasks. The same harsh reality of information flows that leads to socialist central planning end up in disaster in the long run applies to the capitalist conglomerates. Unless they are centralized only by name (as it is the case in holding companies, not exercising centralized operational control), they grow rigid, their technologies and business processes grow stale, and eventually they are beaten by young and hungry newcomers to the market.

The only way that they know to resist this process is to enshrine their way of doing business and their position in the market by coopting government regulation and raising entry barriers. That's why they spend so much money on lobbying - it is one of the most profitable investments known to mankind.

> One of the biggest companies on this planet on a mission to get a share of every transaction on this planet.

Not sure what that is about. Which company is that?

Visa and MasterCard I guess

Surely you mean fascism rather than communism?

That kind of reckless corporatism was a core tenet of early fascist ideology.

The territory government here asked for public submissions regarding the possibility of relaxing restrictions on outdoor display advertising. It received more submissions than any other it appears: http://www.parliament.act.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004...

While I haven't read every one, most submissions seem to be against relaxing restrictions and in favor of tightening them up.

The problem is that companies can tangibly prove the benefit, even if it's minuscule (imagine if 1:10000 car ads will generate a sell at best, that's still better than no advertising), but the citizenry have a hard time proving the opposite - that having a sanctuary from advertising is actually a good thing. And because of that, I fully suspect ads to continue infiltrating our American (and British, and Australian) lives.

Even privacy is easier to advocate for than the intangible peace of mind an ad-free space offers. Even if studies end up proving that advertising rots the brain and keeps us too engaged, even if it is elucidated as one of the causes of obesity and poor sleep hygiene and attention deficit syndromes... companies will simply argue it's too big of a hit to their bottom line to quit, and that will be the end of the discussion.

...and people wonder why AdBlocking continues to grow online.

I suppose I might object that "making a sale" is a tangible benefit but that is a different conversation about the value of commerce in general. Let's not go there today!

I heartily agree with your thesis though - making the case that 'nothing' is a good thing is incredibly difficult. It took decades to prove cigarettes dangerous then get rid of cigarette advertising and that was linked to an observable medical problem.

I don't hold hope that we'll manage with advertising.

Reminds me of how refreshing it was to not see any ads while traveling in Cuba almost 20 years ago.

If you don't mind sharing, where did you grow up? Was it a political influence that resulted in the lack of ads? Was everything state-run as a result?

Just an educated guess but it is most likely Cuba. [0]

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/03/how-do-...

Well then the OP ignores the biggest advertiser of them all: the communist party.

Most of that CP did, at least where I grew up, was not advertisement but slogans. Like "in God we trust" in US. Nobody really takes it as an ad for God.

> Nobody really takes it as an ad for God.

Are you sure?

Seems like the right-wing evangelicals of the US definitely do.

Could you quote a couple of them saying so? Because it doesn't match what I know about evangelicals, they don't exactly consider God something you can buy.

I didn't mean it as a literal object you could buy.

Imagine if we can get cheap AR glasses or contacts out to the world with new batteries. Maybe you can block them all.