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The latest stupid culture war news: The notorious Good Good golf advertisement. Featuring a country club golf gentleman (fine member of high society) having a manic episode, so excited to try overpriced "luxury" slop, he shoves a lady to the ground. Instead of calling the police, the other players just look on; maybe he's the owner, you know the type, with so much money and so little financial or social awareness that he'd even waste it on, random example, a "Quantum Triple Diamond Driver".
I don't fault lefties for boycotting Good Good, coercing them to retract the ad and apologize. Because they should do it to every commercial: I want every non-monopoly with aggressive advertising to be given this (or the Bud Light post trans ad) treatment, until public and online spaces look even better than São Paulo, Lancy Geneva, and Maine (where billboards are outlawed). At least this ad tries to not be boring and obnoxious; I actually think it's somewhere in the top 1% I see and hear (although not a compliment), thankfully rarely anymore thanks to uBlock Origin, SponsorBlock, and generally avoiding software whose primary function is ad delivery.
And this includes invasive tracking. Recently Twitter sent C&Ds to Nitter and XCancel. This follows Reddit tightening old.reddit and Facebook/Instagram have always been locked down. Thankfully there are always alternatives, right now https://twitterwebviewer.com for Twitter, https://redlib.catsarch.com for Reddit, and https://inviziogram.com/ for Instagram - but it's annoying and contributes to link rot. This is your regularly-scheduled reminder to quit Twitter and the other brainrot social media, and replace them with more productive activities, like maybe, partaking in these "sophisticated" forum discussions on theMotte.
Online, I'm with you, but in public physical spaces, I disagree so much. As a Red Sox fan, I remember when the Green Monster at Fenway Park didn't have ads in the 90s and early 00s (in contrast to sometime before that and before my era, when it was plastered with ads), until the new owners decided to plaster it with ads yet again. A high proportion of fans were against it on the basis that it would uglify this holy site, but almost immediately after it happened, I absolutely loved the results and thought it looked far more natural with all the ads (aside: same for the Monster seats; before that, the Green Monster only had netting above the wall). Since then, I've come to appreciate the beauty that is added to things by advertisements that were motivated purely for commercial desires, and often - not always, but often - I feel like there's a real resource being wasted when I see some highly-visible wall or structure of some commercial or industrial building not being decorated with advertisement that could be generating revenue and having a 50/50 chance of helping out the company that's advertising.
I also learned recently that many Torii gates in Japan are sponsored by businesses and the Japanese characters written on their pillars are advertisements for those businesses, so they're roughly the equivalent of a "WALMART" or "DICK'S SPORTING GOODS" stamped on the gate, and learning this made me like these gates even more.
Static advertisements aren’t the worst (unlike animated) and may be better than nothing. But better than advertisements are murals commissioned to real artists whose goal isn’t to sell something to the lowest common denominator. I prefer those on walls and structures and imagine Fenway Park would look better with them too.
If the adverts were truly non-invasive and didn’t try hijacking my attention (or indeed the damn computer itself), I wouldn’t bother with an as blocker at all. I believe in content creators and businesses collecting the revenue for my use of their services to perpetuate themselves, but the industry as a whole hasn’t progressed much relative to the speed to technological advancement.
Modern technology is about custom answers to individuals, not about “macro efficiency” in the old economic sense. Compare the differences between the subscription model for television and the advertising model. If you’re using television to advertise (which is the old model), you want the least common denominator program. You want the show that everybody watches so you can stick in the ad and show it to the largest amount of people. Today, you’re looking to get the next subscriber. You now want the show that “somebody” wants to watch, but it’s someone who doesn’t watch the shows you’ve already sold them. This is what gets you niche programming. Thats why streaming platforms constantly struggle to find “the next 12 people” who want “that next weird show.” Because it they show it to someone who’s already been captured by your advertising efforts, that’s 0 profit. From a productivity standpoint in economic statistics, that’s a complete disaster; because you’re putting large amounts of resources into the smallest audiences possible; not the largest audience possible. That just looks bad in stats.
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What do you think about early 20th century ads painted on the sides of buildings? There’s been a concerted effort in my neck of the woods to restore these “ghost signs” and bring them back to their former glory. In one sense, it’s kind of stupid, since the businesses being advertised have mostly long since closed their doors. On the other hand, the hand-painted lettering is usually not unattractive.
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I think there are certainly contexts where this is true. I'm skeptical about Fenway Park specifically; a mural that exists purely for beauty isn't out of the question in an MLB stadium, which are known to have similar things like fountains or statues or even aquariums which serve similar functions. But I think there's something especially beautiful about the way a stadium reflects its purpose - i.e. to generate profit for the owners via providing a space that people are willing to pay money to watch their local professional team play - that is missing in a mural that isn't in an advertisement. The mural could beautify the stadium and provide a more positive experience to the fan which compels them to be willing to pay more or to come more often, but a pretty piece of 2D art on a wall isn't generally something that baseball (or any sportsball) fans find that appealing about going to a baseball game, and so if it's there, it's almost definitely mostly motivated by some desire to make the park more beautiful to look at and experience, rather than the desire to get more people to be more willing to pay more money to come into the park. And, again, there's something beautiful to the park's visuals reflecting its purpose rather than reflecting some desire to show people a beautiful wall.
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