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Comment by Keegs | Hacker News Reader

This is nothing new but the article hits hard. I don’t want to live in a world where everyone is after my attention but a good chunk of the economy seems to depend on it. There has to be a better future than this?

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The solution, at least for me, is finding things/places, both on and off the computer, where you can avoid having your attention stolen and just focus on something you like. I think the ad-saturated parts of the world are one of those things that you don’t really need, you just get trapped by them if you open yourself up to being swayed by them. Nobody is in my kitchen trying to sell me shit when I’m cooking, nobody is on my bike ride grabbing my attention, and at least for now, my DAW is safe

The challenge highlighted in the article is that adds are increasing in areas that are harder to avoid such as billboards, hotel rooms, airline seats, ride-hailing apps.

Billboards? Is that a new thing? Airline seats? First-time ryanair flyer? If you're determined to never see an ad in your entire life, that was never possible, but if you just want to spend a lot of time without seeing ads this is just as easy as ever.

"without seeing ads this is just as easy as ever."

No. It. Is. Not.

The problem is you've internally moved the goalposts on what you consider an ad, from what would have more historically been considered an ad.

Those clothes with a big nike swoosh on them, those are ads. Individuals wear ads around everywhere. Objects are covered in their own advertising. If you have any electronics on you, god only knows what metrics they are collecting. Hell, these days if you're with anyone else that has electronics there is a non-zero chance those devices are spying on and tracking you.

Eventually those places will be premium real estate for ads. Some one will find a way to bring ads to our kitchen or to mount fiji. Maybe they will fly planes overhead, or do crop circles, put put them in hiking trails.

If advertisers could turn the Moon into a giant Pepsi logo, they would definitely do it.

R.A.Heinlein novella, The Man Who Sold The Moon.

> Maybe they will fly planes overhead

I once was at Miami Beach and there was a boat mounted with giant-ass LED screens riding by. Where I live, there's new electric "bikes" with large boxes mounted to them and 3 sides of the box display ads. People get paid to just ride this through everyone's field of view, or park it for a while at conspicous locations. I feel impotent rage at this increasing terrorization of the populace.

Good luck avoiding all adverts on bilboards in public places while riding your bike

I mostly ride on back roads and side-streets, my city banned billboards and is very small and close enough to the woods to not feel like one. But I get what you mean.

This makes sense. City I am coming from haven't done this and the billboard/advertising agency is very close with the city mayor, meaning, all the (main) streets are littered with advertising. Everytime I come home for holidays (from a large EU city, mind you), I am overblown by just how many billboards are around. Crazy.

And the V/R entrepreneurs are just drooling at the prospect of turning these last refuge places into ad-saturated environments too.

Until now they couldn't track your eye movement to determine if you might be susceptible to their manipulation.

This is true, but I have to buy in to open myself up to it. Until they start giving away whatever VR headset it is, and until hell freezes over and I actually put it on, I’m safe. But the thought of it does make me sick/sad.

The Ted Kaczynski approach works until you want to engage with the world outside your kitchen and you step outside and realize that the dynamic (personalized?) billboards are now across from your apartment complex. And the local park.

Yeah I get what you mean. I’m not like, a luddite, or anything, I just don’t agree with the authors notion that advertising is particularly all-encompassing, especially when you’re not actively using a computer.

You are, with or without ads. The web is a struggle for attention. No website can survive that doesn't addict you to check it again and again.

The route I've gone down is to build the quiet spaces on the web myself. Works decently well.

> No website can survive that doesn't addict you to check it again and again.

What is that supposed to mean? There are plenty of websites that are not out to earn any money. It doesn't take anything for them to "survive".

That's false. Every website needs a server to survive. Serving can be cheap, but it ain't free.

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