1-Agree with postings
2-Anecdote from real life humanizing yourself by mixing in family
3-??
4-Profit!!
I kid I kid. I enjoy your posts but am unsure how a anti-consumer/anti-corporate/anti-advertising posting is modded up so high on a entrepreneurial board that guess what, mostly relies on advertising to generate revenue.
Saying "ignore manipulative ads" isn't anti-consumer. Nor is it anti-corporate -- it just means, roughly, "Buy stuff when the focus is on creating something valuable, not convincing you that something is valuable."
Also, how can you say "Buy stuff when the focus is on creating something valuable, not convincing you that something is valuable."
The context is totally dependant on who the individual is. Who is to stay something is valuable to other people? It is the advertisements job to show to the potential customer why the product is valuable.
Lastly, how does 'ignore manipulate ads' equate to 'buy stuff when the focus is on creating something valuable, not convincing you that something is valuable? That is quite the jump.
"The context is totally dependant on who the individual is."
That's true. There's an information component to ads -- which is why I advocated skepticism over censorship. But in general, if you have two companies that are both pursuing a value-maximizing strategy selling the same product, and one does ads, the other is going to have higher quality (have you seen ads for McDonald's? Have you seen ads for, say, Beffa's (http://www.beffas.com/home.html)?).
'Lastly, how does 'ignore manipulate ads' equate to 'buy stuff when the focus is on creating something valuable, not convincing you that something is valuable? That is quite the jump."
If you don't spend the money, you either a) destroy it, b) save it, or c) spend it on other stuff. If b), remember that saving is deferred spending, so b) and c) are the same with different timing.
Basically I found the comment that I commented on deceptive. It used anecdotes from childhood claiming X is bad, then mentions full savings as if that is the direct correlation between the two. I regret commenting in this thread and will stick to more agreeable topics.
I actually believe there is a direct correlation - anecdotes (sometimes) lead to habits, and then habits lead to savings. It's much easier to form habits in childhood, which is why I picked childhood anecdotes. But it can be done late in life too - I think that was part of the point of PG's essays.
Yes that is one of PG's themes(habits can be changed) but it does not relate to believing that advertising is behavior control and holding this to be true will lead to full savings.
The whole topic reminds me of Feynman's story about his father teaching him about how life on Earth moves because the Sun shines.
Advertising revenue is the solar energy incident on Earth of the web.
Reddit had ads before the acquisition, it's just they ran infrequently enough that most users never noticed them.
Economic theories tend to neglect considerations like people's self-destructive behavior; or they re-define it to make the theory work ("it's not a bug, it's a feature!"). The classic example is of a destructive drug habit.
The addictive element creates a larger user base, but its value is highly debatable: EverQuest was nicknamed EverCrack and World of Warcraft is similar; addictive elements also play into gambling sites, collectible card games, instant messaging, and even sites like Reddit. Anything that sucks up your attention and wastes your time is a net liability. Television sitcoms create the "value" of watching someone else's fake life by withdrawing your attention from your own, real one. (And it initiates a cycle, as the more you watch, the less of a real life you have, the more you'll turn to the comforting artificial alternatives.)
Thus, I don't subscribe to the idea that merely because people are using something, it must have value for them. It has value for the purveyor of the service or substance; and due to corporate self-interest, that is often confused in business with value for the user.
If lacing a drug with plutonium made it a hundred times more addictive, most corporations would have no problem selling radioactive crack (and killing off all their users), as long as it made the numbers work for this quarter.
If life is made torturous so that selling an anesthetic is big business, claiming it "creates value" is begging the question in accepting that life should be like that in the first place. Almost all mass media, including sports, and including the aforementioned addictive games and services, are forms of anesthesia.
The real value would be stopping the death by a thousand cuts, not anesthetizing ourselves to it.
It's much easier to never get in the habit of buying things in the first place. I remember two particular childhood events that dramatically shaped my consumption habits:
In the first, I was 4 years old and in the toy section of Spag's (a discount warehouse near Worcester), and really wanted a new Transformers toy. My mom said "Oh honey, we can't afford it. We can come back next month and get it." And then ran over to take care of my sister, who was throwing a tantrum over not being able to have a My Little Pony doll. I realized I could be the "good child" by never asking for stuff. From then on, my parents and I had a tacit agreement: they would buy me anything I wanted, and in return I wouldn't want much. Lesson learned: sibling rivalry can be a powerful motivator.
For the second - my parents refused to let us watch any TV other than PBS until they'd sat us down and told us about advertisements. And when they did, the conversation was basically: "The commercials are just trying to sell you something. They want to control your behavior, so that you'll go out and buy what they want." I was 5 years old at the time and couldn't bear the idea of anyone controlling my behavior. After all, it was bad enough when my parents told me what to do. The idea that some nefarious marketing guy would reach through the TV and make me spend money was just abhorrent. Lesson learned: make marketers seem like parents, but with only the evil "You have to do this!" parts and not the comforting take-care-of-you parts.
The end result of all this? I'm 26 years old and still using my high school allowance for spending money. Essentially every penny I've ever earned has gone into the bank and stayed there.