Towards a Bra-free Instagram Experience (2017) | Hacker News Reader

Towards a Bra-free Instagram Experience (2017)

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30 pointsaloknnikhil24 comments

>Do men on Instagram contend with this many half-naked dudes and their butts all the time? I really want to know.

In a way, yes. Men are shown ads or muscular, successful men with chiseled jawlines reminding us that we're inferior, our clothes style sucks, how we can't be a man because we don't smoke the same cigarettes as he.

I don't use Instagram, but yea that sounds about par for the course for ads targeted to me.

Minus the cigarette ads, haven't seen those in a long while.

Plus they always have better tools than me (gadgets, watches, or actual literal tools), and look better while using them.

Sure, but imagine how worse it would be to see the outline of the said muscular men’s penises.

Because breasts are similarly sexualized. The muscular man may hurt my sense of self but he does not challenge me to sexually improve or supplement myself.

Muscles are similarly sexualized, so you don't really need to get the penis involved.

wow, our ad targeting is vastly different. Mine is mostly nerd related shit.

Making you feel bad is a proven effective advertising strategy, and a proven terrible world to exist. There needs to be a pollution tax for advertising the way there should be for carbon. If you deliberately pump a harmful product out into the world you should have to pay through the nose for it.

It's pretty easy to avoid Instagram and Facebook. Install an ad blocker and the rest of the web becomes reasonably friendly.

They'll just keep ratcheting up the obnoxiousness until they find your threshold for quitting. These are "free" products, so if you're still enjoying the rest of the site, then they're leaving money on the table.

I agree with the author and wish I could see less ads for bras. I am a male and mostly follow makers and woodworkers, yet I see a ton of ads for bras. My wife doesn't send me too many links to bra companies either.

I deleted my Facebook 2 years ago, and my Instagram is only about 6 months old. I used the same email address in both accounts.

Same here. It's all bras and "slimming clothing" ads. I'm neither a woman nor am I obese. I've repeatedly clicked on the "this ad is not relevant" buttons but they just bombard me with more.

I haven't checked instagram in months as a result.

Do you have kids? When ours arrived and I started searching for baby and kid related items The Algorithms decided that I must be a woman.

I do. Good point, the algorithms are as biased as societal norms from the 1950s.

The objected ads will continue until morale improves.

> says something really depressing about our value as women in the world

Well, most women want attractive men to be attracted to them. The advertisers attempt to associate their products with being attractive. Men are advertised to the same way, it says nothing about men's "value to the world". This is embarrassing melodrama.

Instead of stopping use of a commercial-propaganda-infested app like Instagram, the author continues to use it, but shouts at the wind, essentially, on this is annoying.

Fatalism, defeatism, subservience.

(2017)

This is a ridiculous criticism. Ancient Greeks didn’t look at sculptures of ripped dudes and “feel bad about themselves.” They got INSPIRED and felt GOOD about themselves. Be like an Ancient Greek.

I don't even know where to begin, my friend...

You could begin by choosing to feel good when seeing an inspiring (even “unrealistically” inspiring) image like Michelangelo’s David. :)

AFAIK, David is physiologically impossible; as much as a photoshopped ad.

Which parts of him are physiologically impossible?

His biceps and thighs are well within human proportions I see daily in regular men.

In fact, the least likely portion of him would be the modest endowment, something that a modern man would almost certainly not admit to.

His height, for one. Very inspiring!!

He's standing in a way that requires activating his missing muscle. ;- )

Apparently Michelangelo knew it was missing, because it's due to a flaw in the marble.

I think individually the proportions aren't crazy, but taken together I think they contradict eachother.

Is this satire? Because there are a hell of a lot of differences.

For one... seeing David in rare moments (you listed this example down below, but it was not ancient nor greek) or any art is very different than the current effects of advertising. In those cases, between long stretches of real life, it’s possible or even easy to appreciate. When bombarded constantly with an unrealistic ideal hundreds of times a day, it has a different effect.

Ancient Greeks were “bombarded by unrealistic image ideals hundreds of times a day” as well while passing sculptures and murals in public places. Yet these “unrealistic image ideals” served as a font of inspiration! The “unrealism” and “idealism” served only to heighten their positive effects on their viewers! Be like an Ancient Greek!

What’s next, protesting the Venus of Willendorf for being too thicc? “Unrealistic image ideals” have millions of historical precedents. They are fertility symbols and they can serve to inspire if only you choose to be inspired! Choose to be inspired. :)

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