Ah, you unique snowflake :)

It’s astounding when people think that advertising doesn’t affect them. And yet companies continue to pay billions for adverts...

I think people who use ad blockers, like myself, KNOW all about how advertising works. Oh yes most certainly WE KNOW. That is why some of us choose to block them.

I limit my exposure to marketing as much as I can.

There's no need to be condescending, and there's a much simpler solution to avoid being influenced by ads.

It's called making data-driven decisions.

Step 1: Find a set of products that solve your problem based on independent reviews, e.g. what Stiftung Warentest writes.

Step 2: Use several price comparison engines, e.g. idealo, Preispiraten, Hardwareschotte to find the cheapest option for the products.

Step 3: Order there.

If you methodically follow this algorithm, you are immune to making ad-based decisions.

It's a good idea, but I don't think that it will stop being influenced by ads.

Human behavior is contagious, and advertisers know that. That's why actors in commercials pretend to be just another person like the viewer while lying about performing some action or behavior that the advertisers want the viewer to copy. I don't think that it's possible to suppress that behavior-imitating instinct completely. Humans are generally not very rational creatures -- not even the self-proclaimed rational ones.

Many ads are not just about some product that one might really need, like a keyboard or other equipment that is essential for a person's work. Many ads I see are about junk food, bad lifestyle choices, and trying to convince the public that bad entities are actually good entities (example: greenwashing).

But does anyone actually follow that algorithm 100% faithfully? We are not machines, fortunately.

If you don't have enough money, and can only barely afford to buy something, then yes, very much you will follow it religiously. You will try to buy the most reliable for the cheapest price, because you can't afford the product failing, nor can you afford paying too much, and you don't want to go back to getting food from the food bank so you can spend your grocery money to replace the broken washing machine.

Of course if you're a SV programmer earning 5-10 times the average wage, you don't care about this and buy overpriced shit every day, but many people follow this to the letter.

I'd argue that we and our minds have enough weaknesses in comparison to machines, that it is not fortunate that we aren't more like machines. We'd be far less vulnerable to making the kinds of mistakes that only human minds can make.

> It’s astounding when people think that advertising doesn’t affect them.

I know that advertising affects me. That's one of the reasons why I block ads at every opportunity.