People keep saying that ads are to get the brand into my head, but they dont realise thats a bad thing for the company. I specificly buy brands i DONT see ads for because i believe if they arent spending money on ads but are still being sold in storesz they must be spending that money on bettering the product instead.
this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2026
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
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- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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The fact that McDonald's exists is proof that advertising works.
I find it wild that people are still under the impression that advertising doesn't work. I get it, you block ads, you aggressively ignore them, you feel like they never influence you. Same here. But they do influence us. A little bit here and there. Then consider that most people are way more suggestible than we are. If ads didn't work, they would've never been a thing.
You might think you cannot afford to buy most things advertised, but the numbers don't lie. They'll get you eventually. Even if it's just $3. Not having money never really stopped people from spending it anyhow.
It's unlikely that you're exceptional in your resistance to advertising.
It's just that 95% of all advertising fails to hit its intended target.
I am definitely in the vast minority of people who go so far to not see ads. Not many people will tinker with a raspberry pi for hours just to avoid the possibility of an ad appearing in video streaming services. Lemmy is a bubble that way. You'd rarely meet someone in real life that uses pihole for example but there's thousands on here who do.
And I think the number is higher than 95%. All it takes is a tiny percentage for it to all be worth it.
it took you HOURS to install pihole?
It took me hours to setup a raspberry pi for tv viewing with all the hardware and software I needed working.
Anymore gotchas?
I've never used pihole but I'm sure you could spend hours tweaking it if you wanted to anyhow.
I'm just not even sure what your point would be no matter how I interpret this. If pihole is quick to setup, you really think many people use it? It's probably way under .0001% of households using that.
It is because it works that I spend so much time trying to block them. I don't need them trying to manipulate me, gaslight me, or try to convince me I need shit I don't want.
It's incredibly toxic.
Why do you think some of the most advertised things are... predatory loans and gambling.
Honestly for me the worse of it is, basically on linkedin and similar, people pretending to be recruiters, opening with a fake job posting and asking for your resume, then to follow it up with "Hey you know I don't think this resume is going to get by, can I put you in contact with my resume company, they will sharpen up your resume for $300. Umm... so yeah, don't know if you guessed this, but I have no clue when my next paycheck is coming in, this isn't the time to ask me to drop a large amount of money on something that may not do anything.
ugh yeah. the gambling. I mean that one is straight out like. play our game and you will make millions guaranteed. I mean with that voice saying the bank account balance thing. this should be crazy illegal. Im a big victimless crimes person but I have to say I would like advertising for adult things to be limited to adult venues. I don't think they should allow gambling sites to even be listed in app stores or be indexed by search engines but like if your at a bar or strip club they could have a poster with a QR code.
"Victimless crime" has always been kind of a grey term anyway. There are two sides to the types of things that refers to.
Doing drugs? Being a prostitute? Gambling your money away? Victimless crimes.
Manufacturing drugs? Being a pimp? Running a casino? I'm not so sure.
There’s zero ads for loans and gambling where I am since it’s illegal. So that’s not relevant everywhere.
It's not about buying, it's about staying in your head, even if you don't remember it explicitly.
This kinda boring, menial, repetitive propaganda doesn't try to make you buy something straight away, it's to make you numb to it, to know it, to receive it without thinking, so then it tries to affect you. It tries to turn nothing into anything resembling truth, it turns advertisement and news, into an endless cycle of boring things that get hammered by the "a lie told 1000 times turns into truth" line.
It doesn't affect you when you're watching it, it affects you when you see or do anything relating to it.
When you need to buy new tires, you know what to buy, you don't buy based on technical sheets, you buy it knowing it, even not explicitly.
(A take from Adorno and Horkheimers "Dialectic of Enlightenment", the part where they talk about the media, culture, art, etc)
Exactly this, its the main reason people around this corner of the internet push ad-blocking software so much. Its a slow toxin that warps your subjective processing.
Everyone is vulnerable to it, those that claim otherwise are deluded, and the only way to be free of it is to cut advertisment from your life in as many places as possible.
And to add to that, it worsens mental health issues - at least for me it does. The subconscious "you are not good enough" doesn't do anything good for anyone.
I do not do ad-supported, ever - they are aggravating, i start grinding my teeth and would rather listen to a construction site than to ads.
Only being half serious here, but I wonder if people in prison ever have to watch or listen to advertisements? Just curious.
Futurama and the ads broadcast into your dreams.
I mean, I'm too stingy to pay for premium but I do buy detergent.
I don't know what to buy till I got to the store and see the prices.
And if the prices are similar, you're more likely to buy the brand you've seen advertised more often. Maybe even if you have to pay more. Or even if you won't, most other people would.
Not to sound like your mum but that may be why you don't have money.
Do you buy anything, ever? Then you have money, and can be swayed by advertising in terms of what you spend it on.
I did this exercise a few days ago. It turns out I'm so out of the broad reach of advertisements, that most of the brands and products I buy, I know them from in-shop ads or from early and mid childhood, when I watched way too much TV. I absolutely buy several brands and products for which I've never, in my entire life, ever seen an ad on the internet or TV. There, the main selling point is how atrociously evil the parent corporation is. I can't avoid them entirely, but I can choose the lesser evils.
Now I'm very anti advertisement and aggressively prune that shit from my life, more than the average person. But it makes me hopeful that a less exploitative life is possible in this cursed timeline.
They don't care about you. They care about the people that do have the money.
Those people would pay for ad-free. Edit: according to OP's logic.
No they wouldn't. I'm of those people. I don't pay for ad free.
Some would, but it always surprises me to see how many people don't appear to be bothered by ads.
people have the ability to tune things out. ads never bother me.
The thing with ads is, even if they dont consciously bother you, they still rot your brain.
Exactly.
Annoy you into paying.
It would be funny if all of the ads are for fake products, and just meant to be as annoying as possible to push people into subscriptions. That would explain all the poorly-acted piano lesson app ads.
Ads from giant corporations aren't just about selling something to you, but to keep the brand's name in your head and influence you into having a good psychological image of it. it's also used as a form of influencing the culture of a population. They do a lot of research into how to more efficiently affect your mind, even if you don't notice it.
That's why I recommend blocking ads and/or moving away from those services (the high seas welcome you)
Because you might have money someday
Because you saved that money so that you could buy their product!
The platform owner gets paid for letting the advertiser run the ads regardless of what you do.
What scares me is the political and military ads I see every so often. Along with other fud type things. Its nuts and kind of a relief to actually see an ad selling a physical product.
I hate ads so much that I even blocked ads back in the day on NetZero to get free internet ad free. I have been blocking since Internet 1.0.
The advertisers are doing the same math as the spam calls and emails. Basically, if one in 10,000 bite, that's all they need to stay in business. Ads, and spam both target stupid desperate easily manipulated people. The fact that you also see it, and show distain, in no way affects their business model.
You're not the target audience.
The sad reality: All that means is that the corporations don't care about you. But the ad sellers can still use you to pad views.
They don't need you to buy anything right now. They want you to see the ads, remember them. Think of them when you hear the brand name. Know that their products exist. Maybe even mention one of those products to your friends in conversation some day, or just nod in recognition if someone else mentions it. They're buying space in your mind.
A percentage of viewers will need the product or service, and when that times comes they are far more likely to remember the advertised one.
All I ever see are political ads and geriatric pharmaceutical ads.
Because while a lot of ads that we see are targeted in some fashion to us specifically most are just sprayed out into the world relatively haphazardly. They know that 99% of people who see that specific ad aren't going to go and buy their product right then but if you see that ad over and over its the first thing you'll think of when you think about any given good or sevice
Fantastic point