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Comment by sizzzzlerz | Hacker News Reader

Too many commercials is like over-prescribing anti-biotics. Pretty soon, they don't work anymore. In my watching habits (I don't have a DVR), when the show I'm watchings breaks, my finger is on the remote immediately to jump to the next channel. If that is in commercial, its on to the next. If everything is in commercial (a surprisingly common situation), I'm back on the original station with the auto muted and I'm browsing the net on my iPad or reading a page or two in the book or magazine I have next to me. Or I go take a pee. Or clean some dishes in the kitchen. Anything but watch the frickin' commercial.

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Haven't had cable TV for at least 10 years now and I can't stand watching most shows at other people's houses who still sit through all the car/truck, pill and insurance commercials. I literally feel dumber having watched a few in a row. I really believe there is a science to be discovered there, like slight or temporary brain damage occurring because of commercials. They're so fake/plastic and I feel like I'm being manipulated through some kind of meme the advertiser is trying to push through repetition instead of on the product's merit.

Edit: What I mean is, nobody acts in real life like they do in commercials. I feel dumber watching people behave that way. I get it's supposed to be persuasive but something about modern commercials just irks me to no end.

For a long time I only rarely saw TV with commercials, usually at friends.

I actually enjoy seeing new commercials, and so long as I only watched TV at friends a couple of times a year, I found it enjoyable.

That just proves his point that less is more. Which I believe to be true. It's about strategy and not saturation. But the problem I guess is that they cannot realistically follow each individual so saturating all networks / platforms is the only way they see viable.

The concept is called visual fluency and is applied in advertising terms to hack your mind to remember the ad offer. The more they show the ads, the more they are suppose to resonate. They then combine that with catchy songs and provocative imagery to pull on your primal reactions and emotional strings.

There is a science to all of it, and it’s very effective, even if we’d like to think we’re immune to advertising.

It's illegal to show drug advertising on TV in 99% of countries except USA and with good reason as it's sickening to be subjected to such abuse ... big pharma needs to be taken down ... luckily I have not owned a TV this century

Yeah when I had cable or broadcast tv there was always such a stark difference in the ads between American channels and Canadian ones. Every commercial break in most American channels, especially day time tv, would have drug ads for the strangest things and I always remember being horrified at the side effects of most of them. The commercials in general are also always louder. I always felt like they were just yelling at me to buy their shit. Canadian ones tended to be quieter(though they kept getting louder over time too), there were no drug ads, almost no insurance or healthcare ads.

> my finger is on the remote immediately to jump to the next channel

That’s exactly what I did when watching TV growing up in the 90s, before DVRs.

I guess it’s sort of a form of “channel surfing”.

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