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Comment by sudioStudio64 | Hacker News Reader

I detest advertising. It's literally designed to undermine reason and supplant critical evaluation of ones needs and priorities.

As for web advertising, maybe I was the last person on the planet to figure this out but sometime late last year the web just became unusable on most popular news sites. Popover ads that come up before you can read the content and multiple large ads inline with the content and that "no mans land" on the right.

I seriously hope there is a way to make MS Edge default to the "reading view".

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Advertising & pop-ups on popular news websites are great! Because they remind me that news sites have zero (or near zero) value, and I should be getting back to work instead of wasting time reading them. If they really had value for me, I'd be signing up for a paid subscription & then they wouldn't have to run ads.

Some advertising is good. I am so glad that Harvest advertises. I know I saw it repeatedly advertised on Daring Fireball, so I was aware of it by the time I needed something like it, and I'm super happy with it.

I dunno, advertising seems ok, you have to tell people about your product. It's marketing that's kinda sick.

No, people want to buy things, and there are a lot of things competing for their attention. Advertising, at its most basic, is just how we inform potential customers that we even exist.

Yes, some (a lot? Most?) advertisers get way out of hand. But advertising is not itself evil. It's a tool that may or may not be misused.

> It's ... designed to ... supplant critical evaluation of ones needs....

> No, people want to buy things

That's rather the point. The desire to buy things is driven not by critical evaluation of need, but by psychological trickery that falsely associates buying stuff with a whole range of actual needs.

If ads promoted critical evaluation of a person's needs in relation to available products, that would be a different thing entirely. It is quaint, but I can't help think naive to suggest that the core of advertising is informing customers, and the psychological trickery is 'misuse'.

So it's been psychological trickery that has led people to think, "gee, I'd really like a nice novel to read right now" Or, "boy, I could really go for a fun video game to play"?

How else are consumers going to find out about products? There's no world product registry where products get evaluated on their merits and ranked objectively. There's no such thing as "if you build it, they will come". Even putting a big sign on the front of your building "Joe's Diner" is a form of advertising. Otherwise, people will walk by without any notion that there is food there they might want.

There's no such thing as "If you build it, they will come."

I'm not sure why you think that counters my point.

As I said, if most advertising were about the critical evaluation of needs that would be different.

Instead, you're more likely to get boobs advertising your video game, or butts advertising your deodorant. Because sex sells, the key word being 'sells', not 'informs'.

People would still buy things without advertising.

It is literally not possible to sell something without advertising it in some way. You have to let potential customers know that something is for sale. Putting a "for sale" sign in your used car by the side of the road is a form of advertising. Putting fruit in a basket in front of a store is a form of advertising. Making a sale requires some level of communication from seller to consumer that there is a product or service for sale. We call that communication "advertising".

That's very different from a Coca Cola ad, because it doesn't actually specify who is selling what and where. That's advertising a brand, which is what I'm objecting to.

You just said "advertising".

You're just arguing "semantics".

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