Don't those mega billboards annoy you? Don't the auto playing audio/video ads annoy you? You get on the subway, there are ads (and you've paid for the ticket, it is not even you are traveling free). You drive on the street, there are huge billboards everywhere. You switch on the TV, there are ads. You open a bank account, the bank sells your address and the very next week you get junk in the mail. How many of these are voluntary?

How is it self-righteous to expect a quiet, clutter free life/atmosphere? Almost all ads are ugly, annoying and they are full of lies.

There are actually times ads have helped me find a product I enjoy

How often is this true? Maybe one ad in a thousand is useful, it isn't worth watching the other 999 junk

Then I spent a long weekend in São Paulo (Brazil), a mega-city which had banned all outdoor advertising a couple of years prior.

It was... a profoundly boring urban environment. Until then, I'd never imagined just how much advertising adds color, faces, humanity, and dynamism to a city.

I dunno. I still feel like I dislike ads in principle... but then in practice the world feels empty without them. Think of when you open a magazine from 80 years ago, the ads can be the most interesting part. They're part of our cultural fabric.

I still don't what to think, but I know it's more complicated than "ads are bad".

You can have vibrant, colourful environments without advertising.

Advertising would very much like you to think it’s a big part of modern culture, because that would be vindicating and validating it’s existence.

Sure there are definitely places that have too much, and the overall implementation and UX of ads online is poor, but advertising itself has enabled a lot of people to have access to many things they otherwise would never have.

This doesn’t really make sense. Why would prices go up? The only reason i could see is that without ads people would buy less stuff

Next are all the businesses that will have a harder time attracting as many customers as they used to with ads- with fewer customers one can imagine they will have to raise prices as well to sustain their business.

Last, without advertising it will be much harder to start a new business. If you don’t have a highly visible store front it will be tough to gain traction no matter what sort of business you’re in. This leads to lower competition overall which also means higher prices.

> Don't those mega billboards annoy you?

No. They don't impact my life whatsoever.

> Don't the auto playing audio/video ads annoy you?

The auto-playing ones like what you get on a news page, yes. The ones that play before a video on YouTube, no.

> You get on the subway, there are ads (and you've paid for the ticket, it is not even you are traveling free).

Don't even notice them most of the time. Sometimes they're mildly funny. Can't remember ever being bothered by one.

> You switch on the TV, there are ads.

I don't really watch TV (I guess that's a pretentious response), but when I do I just ignore the ads I'm not interested in. They don't annoy me.

> You open a bank account, the bank sells your address and the very next week you get junk in the mail.

Are you sure it's the bank doing this, and not the post office? In any case it's moving the goal posts a bit, because this is not advertising per se. It's data collection in service to advertising. I find it annoying, but not because I get junk mail. I don't find junk mail annoying, I throw it out without reading it. In fact I don't really read any physical mail.

> How is it self-righteous to expect a quiet, clutter free life/atmosphere?

Yeah but that's not the claim, is it? The person is saying it's self-righteous to constantly complain about advertising because it feels like a soapbox. In point of fact, I consider my life to be plenty quiet and clutter-free and I live in the same advertising-filled world you do.

There are legitimate reasons to dislike advertising. Sometimes ads are a vector for spreading malware, and the peripheral incentive structures are arguably unethical (particularly concerning the use and collection of consumer data). But quite a lot of complaining about advertising doesn't treat the subject with that level of intellectual engagement or nuance. Instead it's just impassioned yelling into a void about how unfair advertising is, or how unaesthetic the world is because of it.

I can see how that would become grating after a while, because on sites like HN and reddit you don't find nearly as many people e.g. crusading against climate change, disease, destitute poverty or hunger. It's actually a downvotable offense for someone to say, "Hey, I'm actually pretty okay with ads though!"

This is why the person you're responding to reacted that way. It's hard to take seriously the idea that the world is "disgusting" because of billboards. That's kind of a hyperbolic way of saying the world isn't the way you want it to be, isn't it?

No i don't think killing people is the best option. I obviously would rather reduce human consumption through other means.

> I am glad that ads ... provide them cheaper goods

There's always a cost to indulgence or easy living. Our children will pay it if we don't.

(I know my comment is dark but the parent comment mentioned "disgust towards the world we live in" so its relevant.)

The thing that bothers me isn't so much ads themselves, but the implicit meaning behind them: consumption. It's simply not a sustainable business or ecological model.

You’re not wrong in some respects, but I think it’s useful to have a dialogue on the subject of increasing (and perhaps invasive) advertising, rather than dismiss it because there are also people starving in the world.

Practically everything pales into insignificance in the face of hunger, disease and war. Let's just give up on everything!

And I note your positive points on ads, and agree. But come on, generally they're absolute sh!t. They slow the web down, they interfere with productivity, they deceive, they aren't clever. One in 1000 is actually funny. They're crap. I could go on.

(Literally this the same argument you just made)

The fact that corporations can use advertising as a tool to manipulate your emotions is something that is fundamentally undemocratic.

Ads drive consumption of needless products that are harmful to human populations and the environment at large.