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Comment by esotericn | Hacker News Reader

Yeah.

Imagine your favourite burger place packing a credit-card sized piece of plastic in the middle of the bun.

You can remove it. It's fairly trivial. You know it's there, it's too big to swallow, you pull it out, chuck it in the bin, and get on your way.

That's what advertising in Windows feels like.

It's just not polite.

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Yeah, but only ~20% of the population knows how to take out the plastic bit. You go to the restaurant with your family and watch them chew around the middle and throw away part of their burger.

They don't eat the plastic. They look at it, read it out loud for a laugh, buy the product being advertised, and then say they don't mind the plastic card because they can just ignore it and it's better than having no burger at all.

If it takes the powershell to remove it, your figure should be closer to 1%

Have you tried putting your burger back at the plate and lift it up again?

Strange but accurate analogy

Advertising _is_ strange.

I'm trying to do a thing and you've put this colorful flashy box in front of it.

Imagine if people tried to "monetize" their conversations. They might claim that otherwise they couldn't afford to talk to anyone (rent ain't gonna pay itself, right).

You'd be talking about football or whatever and suddenly a different tone of voice would emanate from your conversational partner for 10 seconds whilst they talk about some Super New Product.

As far as I can tell the whole industry is impolite, rude, gauche, just a bit icky, really.

I'm surprised this was not an episode of black mirror, sounds crazy ...but that's just me in 2018 thinking that

> Imagine if people tried to "monetize" their conversations.

People do try to monetize their conversations. That's why "networking" is a different word than "socializing".

That's also why it's relegated to special events and occasions, like professional conferences. If you try to "network" when normal "socialization" is called for, you'll be seen as tactless or sleazy.

This holds true for a lot of things related to sales & advertising - if you tried to repeat the same practices in person to your family or friend, you'd get distaste or a punch in the face.

The behavior isn't different in terms of what you do. The name is different according to your goal when you do it.

Only in the sense that both involve talking and smiling. The goal is different, and that goal is shared by all parties involved. If a situation calls for one goal, but you decide to pursue another (networking on a social event, socializing on a networking event), there's a mismatch that makes people uncomfortable.

Advertising makes me angry.

I live in a city that has a characteristic mountain. So, naturally, advertisers are placing their towering billboards so that they constantly block the view when you're driving on the avenue that would have the best unimpeded line of sight.

Whenever advertising makes me angry, I think of all the free things I wouldn't have without it.

Like? You can't really know that you wouldn't have open source, p2p versions of the things you use today that you assume can only exist because of advertising.

Of course I can't prove what may or may not happen.

I just know that I do in fact have these things today because of advertising.

What free things wouldn't you have without it?

What do you think the cost would be for these free things without advertising?

The biggest downside I can think of is while I would happily pay for Google search (per search, subscription, whatever) in an ad free world, there's lots of people who simply wouldn't bother to search and learn new things.

Really though I think they have a good model for their search page, it's unobtrusive and not rude, and it made them the most powerful tech company in silicon valley, so clearly it works. Wonder why other adtechs had to get so much shittier about it.

Do you mean like, t-shirts and mugs you've gotten from promotions?

I suspect they meant Gmail and suchlike.

But free tshirts are pretty nifty.

Like Facebook?

I think that I shall never see / A billboard lovely as a tree. / Perhaps unless the billboards fall / I'll never see a tree at all. -- Ogden Nash

Financial advisors, insurance agents, lawyers, and all sorts of white-collar professionals are expected to sell their firm’s services through their own networks. Of course, human salesmen are paid more for tact, class, and effectiveness that for raw impression count.

Financial advisors maybe, but that's precisely the reason I quickly concluded "financial advisors" for individuals are just a scam for pushing unneeded financial products. Other white-collar professions? How to imagine this happening outside networking events, aka. mutually-understood time for professionals to advertise themselves to each other.

I see it a lot. "Oh, your an accountant! Let's chat later I have some questions about XYZ". Those with less tact will ask then and there usually with a response to meet them at the office next week.

A french Telco provider tried this once. You could get free calls from your mobile but had to listen to an ad before being connected. It didn't last long.

On certain forums that allow signatures people are putting links to their companies/projects or affiliate links, etc. This disrupts the flow of conversation in pretty much the way you describe.

It was (maybe still is) particularly annoying on Bitcoin forums for example, where signatures can contain images.

Agreed, and the reason advertising is so pervasive literally stepping between us and anything we consume is that markets are saturated with products: too many products compared to potential customers, so that they have to fight to get the first spot between us and their competitors. People don't look for a product anymore, it's the other way around, and it's not going to stop unless we focus on the real problem which is not advertising but the monster giving it full control: ie our flawed economic system.

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