In the US we have legalized gambling commercials now
That’s nothing compared to the pharmaceuticals being pushed constantly in ads.
I don’t know how anyone watches live news with all the drug ads
Old people. Hence all the drug ads.
I got my parents set-top boxes with Netflix and cancelled their cable and they still mostly watch broadcast TV, with tons of ads. At this point, I dunno WTF is wrong with them – it’s as if they’re addicted to having the worst experience possible.
They just don’t want to choose. They want the TV on to fill the silence, not to watch a show. Maybe to watch the “news”.
Sometimes I miss the days of flow TV, you just turn it on and that’s it. No browsing the catalogue you just get whatever is on.
I don’t know how anyone watches anything with ads
There’s nothing quite like the experience of watching US tv for the first (and most likely last) time.
That your broadcast system is still up is a mystery to the rest of us.
You know the Dead Internet theory? Where like 80% of the internet is just bots talking to each other and there are no humans involved?
American Cable TV has already reached the equivalent of that. It is a vehicle for advertisement. The whole industry is primarily propped up by advertisers in order to have a platform for their advertisements. Hardly any human eyes are on them anymore, because anyone out there who is still watching TV shows is overwhelmingly likely to be watching those shows on Netflix or Hulu. But the ads must flow.
Mostly the only people who are still seeing these are older folks, who are one of the easiest markets to market to. So there is still, arguably, some value in this. But realistically speaking if you’re advertising on cable TV and your target market is anything other than folks 70+ years old, you’re wasting your time. The whole thing is one big advertiser circlejerk. I believe this is why we now get less than 20 minutes of actual content during a 30-minute programming block. Air time has been shrinking to make room for more ads for a couple decades at least.
I left live-TV behind years ago. I only consider and watch streaming services that offer an ad-free option. Also don’t want my kids to watch all those ads. If we teach the next generation to despise ads, maybe we can change things.
It’s always so weird because it’s not like you can go to your primary doctor and say “I want X drug” right? Like, if there was a reason to give you a drug for something the doctor would have prescribed it. Also not ask you how you felt about them, just that here is X drug for your Y problem. If that doesn’t work we try Z.
Or do people actually swap doctors over and over for months until they get one who says “ok dude”?
You absolutely can, unless it’s Adderall. For some fucking reason you tell a doctor that you’ve been on Adderall for years and it works better for you than the alternatives you’ve been prescribed in the past and they treat you like a drug seeker instead of someone who’s been treating her adhd for over two decades
The latter is called “doctor shopping” and it absolutely happens.
The goal of the advertisement is to have the patient be interested, not the doctor. Admittedly some doctors are not up to date on the latest obscure cutting edge treatments, so there is some possible benefit. However, most doctors are capable of performing cost benefit analyses and understanding side effects, but when a patient comes in asking for a medication, it definitely tips the scales towards the medication.
Well, also there are medical sales people / pharma sales reps, usually attractive women, that go to doctors offices, take them out to lunch, and give them a ton of shit like free samples and golf clubs and whatnot. Have the product name recognition out there from the commercial helps with all this.
I don’t think I’ve ever “asked my doctor about ___” because of something I saw in a commercial.
I rejected my medical care provider’s (I think it was a nurse practitioner) advice because of what I saw in an ad, and it did not go well. They were incredibly offended that I had an opinion and dismissive of the idea that IUDs could lead to scarring, which I got from the ad itself. I didn’t end up with any birth control that day, but the next month, planned parenthood gave me the ring instead of a first generation copper IUD.
I would have definitely gotten a second opinion via some internet searching on anything I saw in a commercial long before I talked to a doctor about it.
Oh, I did do that. I just wouldn’t have looked into it if it weren’t for the advertisement warning.
I think birth control is in a weird category here though, because it’s (generally) totally elective and there’s a bunch of different kinds that work differently for different people, so it’s probably pretty standard for people to have preferences about it in a way that they probably don’t for various types of, say, cholesterol medication.
Hell, some have their own jingles
Oh Oh Ohhhhh Ozempic you know… 🤮
Hey, I would want to know if a pill is gonna make my taint tear.
It’aint.
All I see on what my wife watches is gambling and medication commercials that say nothing about what the medication does but that I should ask my doctor if I need it.
Must be Canada. They’re sort of threading the legal loopholes for drug advertising
They do the same in the US. Some of these commercials are super vague.
Finally. I was super annoyed every time I had to go to gamblingsite.net just to get me addicted to gambling with free money, just to trick me to going to gamblingsite.com where I had to spend real money.
Same in UK / Australia it seems.
We have an expat TV streaming option at home for the wife and holy fuck bingo ads galore on those channels.
Also, add for insurance for funeral costs? Wtf?
What country for the bingo ads?
Not sure. Didn’t pay attention which station it was.
And still have prescription drug commercials.
Now? I saw ads for the local races and slots place when I was a kid.
Ireland too :(
Somehow businesses have managed to convince people it’s normal to waste countless hours of their life listening to someone else tell them what they need to buy so they can be happy and fulfilled. We’re bombarded by it. Radio, TV, internet, social media, busses, billboards, flyers, junk mail, email spam. It’s everywhere. It completely pervades our society and lives. It’s pervasive and it’s anything but normal.
It’s a sign of a seriously sick culture, and somehow we’ve all become brainwashed and numb to its harmful effects.
You might find Edward Bernays and his impact on advertising interesting.
One of the numerous problems for America’s magnates was the consumption of the average citizen. Many only purchased what they really needed, a behaviour which moguls wanted to change. The Wall Street banker Paul Mazur summarised this in a particularly straightforward manner: ‘We must shift America from a needs to a desires culture’, he wrote in 1927 in the Harvard Business Review. ‘People must be trained to desire, to want new things even before the old have been entirely consumed.’
https://www.historytoday.com/miscellanies/original-influencer
https://www.npr.org/2005/04/22/4612464/freuds-nephew-and-the-origins-of-public-relations
Economy goes brrr. He needs a special circle of hell. And perhaps if not him it would have been someone else, but he was the one who brought upon consumerism, planned obsolescence, and the whole “keeping up with the Jones”.
Christ on a bike, imagine finding out Goebbels used your methods to murder millions, and you still didn’t realise that you’re a cunt 😬
Very interesting reads, thanks. I knew some of it but wow…
With exceptions of few countries, I believe the modern society is closer to the novel Brave New World than 1984 story. People have been convinced to accept control by way of pleasure. To forget the mundane and realities of life in exchange for gratification by constant triggering of our own biochemistry that induces the feeling of pleasure. We are encouraged buy the things we don’t need to impress the people we don’t like, so that consumer spending will keep the all-mighty economy kept being fed. But if we complain that we don’t have enough left for essentials, then we are told it’s because we keep buying iPhone or avocado toast. The media will say that the economy is slowing down because of less consumer spending, but then chastise us for doing the exact same thing we are told to do: spend and spend.
Imagine a generation of people centering even their nostalgia around commercial products instead of interpersonal relationships and life experiences. Those things are replaced by products that are becoming crucial to creating it, like game consoles, commercials, printed media - just abysmal
What’s abysmal?
People are going to have nostalgia for the the things they grew up with.
The house you grew up in, your neighbourhood, the school you went to, tv shows, games, whatever.These things don’t replace nostalgia for interpersonal relationships and life experiences, they supplement them.
I put on a Youtube channel of 80’s commercials as a pre-roll before a scheduled meeting, it was wildly popular
There are a few channels that will run 8-10 hour Sunday morning cartoon compliations with commercials included. For some reason I really like those even when I hate almost all other ads.
It completely pervades our society and lives. It’s pervasive and it’s anything but normal.
perverts. it’s perverted. a more fitting word.
It okay
If they can afford advertising then their product is overpriced and not worth your time
Cool now do gambling
Please also include all the bullshit random toys, card games, loot boxes, and other garbage people like to pretend are not gambling.
Don’t forget lootboxes
You know. Just turn it off entirely.
nod
So recently our local government relaxed the rules on sports betting / advertising. It’s now everywhere. When you go to see our local MLB team the stadium is coated in bright LEDs advertising bet dot com.
Now gambling firms have ads that tell you not to use them.
I’m wouldn’t mind if it was “you have increased your limit once today, you can’t do that for 48 hours now” then 60, then 120, or something. But no, it’s just “set limits”, that you can change whenever you want…
Muffins?
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen an advert for a muffin
Just in case it’s not obvious, they mean an English muffin, a kind of flat bread roll. In the UK that’s what they sell for breakfast at McDonald’s (sausage and egg, bacon and egg etc).
You know, this is the first time I’ve witnessed a country refer to something we call [country] [thing] as just [thing]
A sausage and egg McMuffin does not look like a muffin. It actually does look like an English muffin because that’s what it is.
Oh course the McMuffin is served on a muffin. But when I just hear “muffin” by itself I don’t think of the sandwich including sausage and egg and cheese and whatnot. You have to actually say “McMuffin” to conjure that image. Otherwise I just think of a plain English muffin.
It would be like if they said they were banning advertisements for buns. While a hamburger is typically served on a bun, just saying bun alone doesn’t really include the entire sandwich. I could serve a hamburger in a lettuce wrap, or on sliced sourdough or something other than a bun. If McDonald’s served their sausage and egg on a lettuce wrap, would that circumvent this ad ban?
Reading this comment thread has made Muffin lose all meaning. Isn’t it such a funny word when you think about it
Muffin…
Yes. I agree 🤭
Football.
That’s just the rest of you calling it American, not ir being actually called American football /s
Oooh right of course. I’ve not had a maccies breakfast in a while and kinda forgot. Most breakfast places I’ve ever been to just sell “baps”, “rolls” or “butties” even if they end up serving it on a muffin roll
Lol. Most English people don’t even know what an English Muffin is, they are less common there then they are in the US.
Most English people don’t even know what an English Muffin is
Citation needed
They are an American invention and are way more popular here than in England. They exist in England, they are marketed as “muffins”, but they aren’t terribly popular.
(Finding English muffin sales data is harder then I had expected.)
I’m English, I assure you people here eat them all the time!
Are you sure they were invented in America? That seems very unlikely to be true so I googled it, wikipedia says recipes for muffins appeared as early as 1747 in English cookbooks…
You know, after further research I am now second guessing myself. It’s something I have always been told, and half of it is from family who were living in England saying that almost nobody eats them.
Now I am wondering if my assertion is only based on half facts and anecdotal evidence.
As for the invention itself, I can only find evidence of vague recipes that don’t seem to representative of the English muffin we know today.
I think the sourdough variety had a popular brand started in San Francisco in the early to mid 1900s, I think sometimes that gets mixed up with being the first instead of being a popular version that wasn’t really available elsewhere to Americans last century.
Deep lore of B server
Like a mcdonalds mcmuffin maybe?
Next, they will make healthy food affordable, right ? Right ???
Centrist government says: We’ve done the lefty thing. Leaving that in place is a righty thing, so no. Balance
Best they can do is make junk more expensive than healthy food.
This is probably for the best.
Finally. It always baffeed me that it’s legal to advertise bread covered sugar to children
Odd to hear of old Blighty coming out with a level-headed policy after the last decade or so of wank governance.
Labour government.
What’s wrong with muffins? Meh, who cares. Muffins sell themselves by being muffins.
This somehow makes me want to go and order a burger
A muffin burger with a side of cereal
A muffin between a burger bun? That’s a lot of bread but I guess it could work.
Let’s see if it helps the obesity problem.
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The McRib is not made of anything identifying as food so it should be fine.
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Somehow this set off a mod. And I cannot imagine why.
The McRib doesn’t need advertising.
Yes it does. It’s only offered on an irregular basis, so for the people that would only go to McDonald’s for the McRib, and no other item, would need to be notified when it’s available.
Muffins?
No, really, why muffins?
Next to be introduced the fish and chip tax.
You can’t advertise a burger during the day? To protect kids health? Weird
Yeah I thought so too. You don’t have to buy your kid anything they ask for, it’s your job as a parent to set boundaries.
Unless they’re trying to make the parents think of burgers less often, so they’re less likely to buy crap for their kids.
Either way, it seems like the government is doing your parenting for you.I mean you shouldn’t be advertising dead animals in general as far as I’m concerned, it’s not good for the animals, us, nor the planet. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
You dropped this \.
