How Did Elevators Lose Their Music?

I guess you are still safe if you go alone in the middle of the woods without any device.

I was talking about the ads on every vertical surface in the mall, not long after the movie came out, and someone said, "I guess I didn't notice." This is how democracy dies. Not with a bang, but a whimper.

Ready Player One is much more on the nose about it, but it goes by so fast people likely missed it too:

> we estimate we can sell up to 80% of an individual's visual field before inducing seizures

Hotels have a rather hard time behind them, plus competition with AirBNB, no wonder that they are looking for every income opportunity.

My hotel in Luxembourg (8 floors total) had 2 screens on either side of the doors to select your floor from. There were static ads in place of floor numbers, to make the floor selection look longer. After the elevator starts moving, the floor selector collapsed to a condensed view with video ads playing on both screens and over the speakers.

That being said, I am practically allergic to commercials on screens. If somebody would try to shove it down my throat on a regular basis, the first think I would look for is how to sabotage/break this system while not being caught on camera(s).

There is one place in our city (Geneva), in the very center some business has put a screen in their window facing super busy street. I don't mind short adverts running there that much. But between them, they put 1s very bright white light blinking done in such an intense way it steals your attention completely and is pretty horrible to your eyes if you actually look at it. Anytime I walk around I look for a stone to throw at it. Or some silenced .22, just to make it stop (I won't do it but only due to cameras and not having a silenced .22, otherwise I would have already done it and would even feel great). Mind you, this is 2m from very busy road and intersection, so I think its an accident waiting to happen because during nighttime its pretty bad.

It was called Beethoven's and you had to be good, even though you were going to be playing instrumentals somewhat in the background. He didn't read music or play classical but he could play anything he heard, was wickedly good at faking it and amazed them at stealthily playing pop tunes in classical style.

He would play from 4 to 8, five days a week.

They had a beautifully-tuned well-polished Steinway featured in a corner area of the bar that was overlooking the open-air dining room below. The piano was on a little riser and the back walls were smoothly mirrorized other than a small stainless audio jackplate right near the piano stool.

Every day he would come in wearing his tuxedo, sit down at the instrument, unplug the piped hotel Muzak from the jackplate, and plug himself into it instead.

He could be kind of bold when taking requests from the bar patrons, but down in the dining area it was always a nice background effect.

And of course when you used the elevators or the bathrooms, he was live for your listening pleasure.

All beautiful, all music, all the time.

We were on the 45th floor, so there was plenty of captive time.

Adverts on trains are even worse, I pay £100+ for a ticket and have to suffer the adverts because they want to get another 50p or whatever.

So I'll drive instead. Although the M6 seems to have more and more adverts in fields along it as time does on.

When I'm dictator of the world I'll ban all adverts, they are a drain on society.