The Stealthy Politics of Urban Advertising | Hacker News Reader

The Stealthy Politics of Urban Advertising

placesjournal.org

40 pointsprismatic17 comments

"We would “sticker bomb” a vinyl decal of a two-headed Rottweiler on lampposts, power boxes, bar bathrooms, and park benches"

Stickers are the worst. They can't be painted over like spray paint. They get brittle as they age. Removal requires a human with a razor blade and some shop cloths and minutes of time

Edit: and good luck preserving the surface if it's old, soft, or already overpainted.

> Removal requires a human with a razor blade and some shop cloths and minutes of time.

Or a few seconds with a 3000 PSI power washer and narrow fan nozzle. Though doesn't work nicely indoors.

Thanks for the microplastics with a typical "no longer my problem" approach.

If the sticker is just left to weather the same will happen.

Well, it's not really his problem. These companies put their trash in our property and we're supposed to clean it up? Such an indignity.

It's the advertisers who are the problem. They're the ones dumping their garbage on us, reaping the benefits and then expecting us to clean up after them. Wish someone would just drop the banhammer on the whole industry already.

I blame the prospectors who found the oil.

Fuck it, let's kick the can like we mean it: I blame the dinosaurs who died and turned in to oil.

It's not the existence of plastics that is the problem. It's the fact advertisers are smearing that stuff all over cities in their "campaigns". It's not our responsibility to undo the mess they create. They're the ones who should have to pay to clean it up.

well, dinosaurs didn't create oil, that's just silly. It was all the plant life.

However, aside for that aside, that's not the actual culprit. The real culprit is the Big Bang. Or as Carl Sagan put it: "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe."

> Removal requires a human with a razor blade and some shop cloths and minutes of time

Or some solvent and 30s of time.

Urban advertising? More like visual pollution.

Am I the guy with the bong in his lap if I say that any man-made structure should be considered visual pollution?

What is the exhaust of the bong, then? ;->

Yes, and it's probably time pass it around.

Advertising introduces a visual symbol usually without cohering to the architecture and layout of the space, by design, to attract attention. So if all man made structures are visual pollution, I'd say that advertising would be visual meta pollution.

I wouldn't say that about any man-made structure but you're definitely right about many of them.

Some exceptional buildings (there are many, but not most) transcend their property/production purpose to have positive visual and aesthetic or other value (historical, innovative etc.) and be beautiful or something on their own; not visual pollution.

But they were not built this way for no reason, assuredly the architects, builders, owners, and affiliates gain some goodwill/awareness/advertising value from an important structure in a meaningful location.

Same then for every other structure, only at 10-100X less revenue per hundred impressions. Property is advertising. To the left.

Is a pile of manure visual pollution too? But intentional or not it makes the point that visual pollution is pretty arbitrarily defined.

Yes, you stoned.

Humans enjoy looking at man-made structures. Even loners on islands build.

To live in invisible infrastructure would be unsettling. Seeing security is part of our happiness. As are ideas around wealth. And work and fulfillment.

It also allows us to enjoy nature. Without it nature to us would be nothing, just 'is'

Can't we start with information pollution - ads, and see how we feel?

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