this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2026
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Privacy
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This may be a hot take here but I do not actually hate the concept of "paying money to promote a product or service". However, in practice I can hardly think of an advertising method that I find tolerable in the slightest due to the manipulation tactics. When you look at vintage photos advertising is usually some hand painted sign on the side of a bus stop that says "Try Zuckerman's Flour!" I don't hate that, but we also don't have that.
"Hey this thing is here" and "have this problem try this" are useful enough that even without paid ads people make that content.
The lifestyle manipulation, feeding unfounded fears, biases, anxieties, and rage for almost anyone reason is evil to me.
100% agree
Back in the good-ish days of reddit, they had ads that I actually appreciated. They were clearly labeled as ads and had a different color, were at the top of the feed only, so once you scrolled past the first one you were done, and we're essentially just sticky promoted posts, so they had comment sections.
You could find honest reviews of the products in the ads. Shills we're identified and down voted into oblivion, so the real shit tended to land on top. It encouraged advertisers who actually had quality products on offer and who understood their audience. They were the only online ads that ever led directly to me buying a product.
For me the problem use to be it having gone from "Our product is great and here's why" style of adverts to the psychological manipulation shit (image of beautiful woman seducing handsome man, queue name of perfume).
I'm fine with people trying to convince me but detest when they try to manipulate me.
However the recent tendency to relentlessly shove it in front of me ALL THE TIME does get on my nerves - it's like getting constantly harassed by a shameless salesman with no respect for other people.
There is this little community here on Lemmy focussing on vintage german ads:
/c/die_reklame@feddit.org
Ads have changed, but those ads telling you that your body is ugly and that you need $product to change it are old and have been around since the 19th century and the beginnings of modern advertisements. It is also quite interesting how old some of the usual scams are. There are currently people on TikTok scamming people with some method invented in the 1800s
Yeah good points there, and I certainly didn't mean to imply ads were historically better on the whole. Ads from a a century ago also featured a significantly greater amount of flat out lying about their products, especially when it came to medicines and "tonics".
But even if we accept that their honesty has improved (dubious) I do think advertising today has become more intrusive, and the function of advertising is today is more about disrupting our focus than it ever has been.