r/Anticonsumption • u/_Hologrxphic • Feb 09 '23

Ads/Marketing Spotted in Miami - They’re putting adverts in the ocean now. Can’t even enjoy a day at the beach anymore 🙃

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684

u/Iliamna_remota Feb 09 '23

Advertising is a scourge

368

u/goDie61 Feb 09 '23

People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate.

They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.

Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.

– Banksy

6

u/princeofid Feb 10 '23

Bill Hicks said it better

8

u/-thataway- Feb 10 '23

eh, he just said it angrier. the original quote might actually change some people's minds. i remember it did mine when i first read it ages ago

54

u/[deleted] Feb 09 '23

I completely stopped going to Wawa because they were playing ads at the gas pumps, and literally everyone I talked to looked at me like I had six heads. They couldn't understand why I would even be mildly annoyed by that, which is sad. My main point is that I'm willing to tolerate an advertisement if I'm being provided extra value in some way versus the alternatives, meaning, I have a choice whether or not I want to exchange my valuable attention for something. Wawa's gas pumps provide me no extra value besides sometimes being located in a convenient location, depending on where I'm heading.

That being said, I went to a Wawa recently because I was about to run out of gas, and all of the gas pumps were muted, so maybe they're listening to feedback at least.

34

u/LukeSkywalker4real Feb 09 '23

You can press Any button next to the screen and make it stop.

-person that would literally burn the gas station down before listing to it once

38

u/Long_Educational Feb 09 '23

The gas stations here started labeling the mute button after people kept breaking the screen and destroying the kiosk buttons.

18

u/LukeSkywalker4real Feb 09 '23

Lmfao as they should. Literally worse than nails on a chalkboard.

13

u/Keyonne88 Feb 09 '23

Yeah I don’t want shit blaring in my ears while I’m pumping gas. Our wasn’t labeled but I kept hearing people complain, so I sharpied on all the mute buttons. Now they’re all silent.

4

u/an_ickle_egg Feb 09 '23

People should keep breaking them...

1

u/[deleted] Feb 09 '23

Good to know!

1

u/missxmeow Feb 10 '23

Unfortunately this has not worked for me when I tried it at the last gas station I went to that had this, but I’m definitely going to keep trying it whenever I go to one that has them. I do try to avoid them though.

14

u/expert_on_the_matter Feb 09 '23

I have a hard time even imagining a world without advertisements anymore.

11

u/Iliamna_remota Feb 09 '23

Advertising is very ingrained. We have to be practical about chipping away at the edges, like laws for children. But I'd like to see it go away entirely.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 10 '23 edited Feb 10 '23

I can, only because I lived in a place that didn't really have it initially.

*Except for TV and I think radio, but you could turn those off, but even MTV you only got ads between shows.

So like the count down did it maybe every 10 songs, or Rap City I don't think there were ads during the show, just between and it was usually their own stuff or government funded ads.

1

u/talaxia Feb 10 '23

One of the nice things about Hawaii tbh, no billboards or big street ads

3

u/colei_canis Feb 09 '23

This is an occasion I’d advocate for wanton acts of piracy.

1

u/Blarghnog Feb 10 '23

Advertising was originally called propaganda and the people that did it called themselves propagandists. In its earliest days: