Fortnine actually made a video explaining how Google's ads are a scam.

In a nutshell, they don't convince people to buy things. They predict that someone is about to buy something, shows ads for it and then take credit for the purchase.

The actual truth is the people paying for ads are rubes.

When it came out that Facebook’s “pivot to video” numbers were all fake nobody batted an eye. Marketing departments have failed to apply any statistical rigour for decades and all fall prey to the the idea that if you target ads well enough they work.

If you even have a marketing department they exist to spend money, so as long as they have charts and graphs they’ll ignore the users and keep asking for budget.

My dad asked me the other day if I had seen some commercial for something and I was like "I block ads on the net and don't watch regular TV. How would I have seen it?"

When did advertising become so evil? It's always been there, but today it's ridiculous. Even the targeted ads are useless.

Imagine if all these companies spending billions on vast networks of advertising actually used that money and energy on something, anything, useful. This meme is on point.

You have to remember that the people in charge of advertising spend are c-suite executives, and c-suite executives are the absolutely dumbest rung of society. Invasive advertising makes them feel important, and nothing else in the world matters more than their feelings.

I do those Google survey things for Google Play money.

Google, the biggest spyware company ever to exist.

99/100 of the things it sends are "Have you been to any of these places recently", and none of them are even in my state.

I don't understand. You have my location. Why are you asking me about shit in Texas?

In the end I get a dime for my time and sometimes I spend it on some game.

Advertising is a perk

Control is the goal

When your generation isn't advertised to anymore, it's a strange feeling. My uncle who is in the boomer range, they stopped advertising to them and he and my aunt really took it hard. Like I said, it's a weird thing to go through.

When they stopped advertising to my generation when I was early 20s, I watched them start trying again around the late 20s. I was kind of in the fuck you phase at that point.

My point is, if you're in a booming type generation, you probably don't know what it's like to have no advertising towards you anywhere. Some generations, no one cares what you think.

Note: Not a bad thing to be not advertised to, but it's a shock when it happens. You realize how much of it is out there.

Imagine if you and a friend entered a large, empty cafeteria, got your meal, sat down, and started eating. It would be so quiet your voices would echo. Then two more people come in and do the same thing. They start talking and it gets just a little bit more difficult to hear your conversation, so you and your friend start talking louder. Then more and more people come in start talking and the background noise gets louder than the foreground sound until you need to wear earplugs just to hear yourself chew.

That is the state of advertising. If only one player in a market advertised, they might derive some advantage but now people have to pay advertisers to scream the name of their product just because their competition does and no one can even hear the name of the product because everyone is screaming.

If it ever comes to pass that I can't learn or figure out a way to block ads, I'll stop visiting sites that show ads. Obviously, that will severely limit my choices, but probably that's a good thing.

I play this single player mobile football game that has pop up ads. I just turn off the wifi when play instead of paying 5 bucks to remove ads.

This is true, but it I can't escape the fear that it is far more fragile than we realize. What happens when they start coming after adblockers harder?

More like precisely targeted ads of stuff I've already bought and don't care about anymore...

They've basically dismantled society so Amazon can think I'm some kind of toilet seat and/or chainsaw collector. Clown shit.

They wouldn't waste money on ads if they didn't work enough to at least break even on them. They work. People with adblockers or who do not click on ads are not the norm. Not that I like this, but here we are.

I don’t own a smart tv. I have no streaming services. I use Firefox with Ublock. I have an ad block on the one game app I play (Scrabble). If a podcast tries to play an ad I will drop everything to hard focus on the phone and hit the ff until it’s back. I don’t even have an Amazon sub. What do they hope to accomplish?

Granted, I’ve done some home maintenance for a relative and there’s zero effort there to avoid ads. Not even a mute as they play YouTube ads via their smartTV. So, maybe that’s everyone else.