Advertising as a major source of human dissatisfaction (2019) [pdf]
116 comments
·December 5, 2025FrankWilhoit
popalchemist
The conclusion that every government came to after Bernays' "Crystallizing Public Opinion" is that the society who can be arbitrarily manipulated by propaganda is better because it's something like adding a rudder to a rudderless ship.
staplers
If democracy is predicated on independent thought and decision (free speech, free vote), then the "rudder" in this analogy becomes authoritarianism with an additional step.
AnimalMuppet
There are two kinds of advertising. I will call them "scarcity advertising" and "abundance advertising".
Scarcity advertising is, for example, "Joe's grocery now has cantaloupes" (back in the day when cantaloupes were not available all year). It's information - something is now available that wasn't available before.
Abundance advertising is, for example, "The Chevrolet SomeHotCar will give you an exciting life like the people in this ad. Don't you want that?" As someone put it (wish I remember who, I would give credit): "[This kind of] advertising attempts to make the person you are envy the person you could be with their product. In other words, it attempts to steal your satisfaction and then offers to sell it back to you."
The first kind of advertising is useful. The second is abusive.
zeroonetwothree
Usually the second type is called “brand advertising”. The idea is to create a positive association with a brand and not expect you to take any immediate action. The first type maybe “action advertising” (I’ve heard other terms).
Most advertising is actually the first type.
cm2012
I have run hundreds of millions in advertising dollars for dozens of companies. The vast majority of ad spend is the former category.
sershe
How about an ad (assuming an honest product, since this thread is clearly about ads as such) in a remote village saying "get a work visa to Europe/US, you could live like these people with higher living standards!"
People who were quite happy being subsistence farmers are now aware, or much more aware, of the possibility of higher living standards. Doesn't seem immoral to me. Why would a car ad be immoral then? Perhaps it will improve the average purchasers life? I say it someone who is quite happy with a 15yo Honda Fit :)
MangoToupe
> The first kind of advertising is useful.
What utility does the first sort of advertising have? At best it seems non-abusive, but it still clogs up our brains with crap we don't need and didn't ask for.
brk
Unless you like cantaloupes.
SoftTalker
By what other means would people with a product or service to provide reach other people who are interested in obtaining that product or service?
morleytj
Currently I think it is difficult to argue that advertising in its most visible forms have any serious benefit to people looking to obtain a service.
How often does an actual random advertisement shown on a billboard or a preroll youtube ad actually lead to a quality product? I think it is fairly common for people who are acquiring the best versions of things to do so primarily through research in forums or reviews, which is coming from the user looking from the product, rather than the product forcing itself into the mind of a given user to convince them to consume it.
NickM
Have you really never bought a product or service for some other reason than that you saw an ad for it?
People have plenty of other ways of finding out about useful products and services. You can talk to your friends and family, or go to a store and talk to a salesperson, or look up product reviews online, or even pay for something like a Consumer Reports subscription.
venturecruelty
Friends and family can be influenced, although I'd still trust them above anyone else. But salespeople are incentivized to lie to you (sorry, it's true). Product reviews are astroturfed by bots now. Consumer Reports, too, has been captured by industry, and is largely useless now.
When the metric is "make sales and make as much money as possible", it will be incredibly difficult to avoid bias from people with a vested interest in selling you something. This is why advertising (admittedly, mixed with our current society) is so insidious: it's very hard to find a third party that isn't trying to profit off of you buying something.
harrigan
We replace push advertising (unsolicited messages) with pull systems (discoverability on demand).
nickff
Discoverability is a very difficult challenge, especially for small niches. Many customers contact my employer, saying that they didn't know our products existed (and many products have existed in some form for >10 years). If you can find a way to improve discoverability, you would be a hero to many niche businesses.
mzajc
Certainly not through conventional advertising. There's heaps of billboards where I live, and I'd have a very hard time finding one for a shop/service/political party/business that hasn't been around for years.
mrguyorama
Meanwhile Maine banned them decades ago and it turns out the world doesn't end and you can still find ambulance chasing lawyers and weird cults just fine.
Hell, one of our best known lawyers in the entire state is a freaking injury liability one.
But hey, direct evidence of lack of harm never seems to stop all the cockroaches coming out of the woodwork insisting that the world fails if we can't have our eyeballs sold to the highest bidder at every second, and that a different world is just impossible. Gee, I wonder if those people are just ignorant, or maybe have some motivated reasoning, like if most of them were paid entirely by advertising revenue.
jgeada
Word of mouth. If you make happy customers, they'll readily tell others.
But the truth is most modern products aren't good enough to earn word of mouth.
A good example of how to work it right is Steam: while it is not perfect, most discussions give them benefit of doubt because most of the time they do work for the best interest of their customers, not just themselves.
venturecruelty
Eeyup. Costco does zero advertising, and yet everyone knows about Costco. Why? Because they're good. In reality, the prices don't always work out, but they have so many other nice things: opticians, tires, a food court (with loss leaders!), rotisserie chicken (also a loss leader), solid products, etc. Costco exists to make money, sure, but it doesn't feel like they're trying to screw you. I can't say that about 99.9% of companies now.
inetknght
> By what other means would people with a product or service to provide reach other people who are interested in obtaining that product or service?
In my opinion, it would take quite a lack of imagination to ask such a question.
There's many many ways to reach people who want your product. Industry-relevant news publishers and conferences, professional/personal anecdotes (eg, blogs and recommendations), demonstrations and training offers, etc.
A different question would be: by what other means would businesses force their products on people who don't want them? Hopefully the answer is: none.
BigTTYGothGF
Sounds like someone else's problem, mine is "I don't want to see your ads".
tweakimp
They can put their information where it can be found easily by people who are interested-
SoftTalker
That's advertising.
alexashka
> A society with a pragmatic regard for its own survival would ban it outright
Western society would cease to exist if it didn't continue its diabolical lies, falsehoods and abuse. The lies are not optional.
It is because of pragmatic regard for survival of the status quo that the lies do continue. That word 'pragmatic' is what keeps diabolical people from seeing themselves for what they are.
lukan
You say that like western culture is the worst here?
Where is it better? Russia? Where stating that a war is a war can get you in prison? China, where historical events, like 1989 at tianamen square are wiped out? North Korea where everyone cheers up to the beloved genius leader?
venturecruelty
Can we not critique something without whataboutism? We're not talking about China or Russia, where presumably scant few HN contributors live.
cm2012
A touch dramatic, chap.
kimbernator
I find it surprising that more people aren't dismayed at how many advertisements we are being exposed to daily. I think that once you're used to it, you don't feel much concern about it, but when you manage to cut a lot of them out (e.g. I have a pi-hole filtering a large portion of ads in my whole home) it becomes extremely upsetting to be dropped back into a place where they are everywhere.
Few things upset me as much as driving around a beautiful place and having billboards plastered up and down the highway. A few states have come to their senses and banned them.
The issue as a whole is that it genuinely is eroding the human experience. Being alive in a world where your eyesight is real estate to be filled with images that are meant to leave you with negative emotions with the intent of taking your money from you is bleak.
venturecruelty
>I find it surprising that more people aren't dismayed at how many advertisements we are being exposed to daily.
Click through users' profiles here and see where they work.
happytoexplain
I strongly disagree. Hearing an ad makes me a little miserable/angry almost instantly, without even the context of the ad yet. They are one of the major categories of corporate mistreatment of humans, which together are the #2 most hideous by-design facets of our civilization, after war ("by-design" meaning to the exclusion of illegal activity).
Aurornis
Nobody in the comment section is apparently reading the paper, because the only subcategory that reached p<0.05 significance was newspaper advertising expenditure.
When they stretch the p-value threshold for significance to p<0.1, they claim magazine advertising expenditure reached that threshold.
TV, Radio, and Cinema advertising did not reach significance even at the expanded p<0.1 threshold.
The methodology of the paper is also not great at all. They looked at changes in advertising expenditure and changes in happiness measures and then tried to correlate the two.
happytoexplain
This makes every single comment irrelevant/false?
Aurornis
The comments that assume this paper supports their claims about digital, TV, or radio advertising are not as supported as they seem.
Most comments are just airing opinions and grievances loosely related to the topic anyway.
doctorpangloss
I read the paper, there’s tons of interesting research showing advertising CAUSING certain effects (oftentimes good ones!) but, what’s the point of participating with that substance? People want to participate in a hand up-and-down motion on circularly adjacent partners about “advertising bad,” not learn something.
happytoexplain
Why this bitterness in defense of advertisers of all things? Engage with the comments, rather than disparaging them all from above in a blanket statement. They all have substance regardless of the details of the study.
talkingtab
OMG. This is like reading a headline that says "Cigarette Smoking is a source of dissatisfaction"
It is not advertising. It is a targeted attempt by other people to persuade you to do something for their benefit, their good. Without regard to the effects on you.
Do you remember the Marlboro Man persuading people to buy cigarettes? Many people made lots of money from owning that stock. Lots of people died. Lots of people got addicted. Lots of people suffered.
Do you remember Purdue Pharma? They made billions after persuading doctors to prescribe their drugs. They destroyed the lives of millions of Americans. Calling that "a source of dissatisfaction" is just wrong.
Targeting makes this persuasion more effective and more abhorrent.
You live your life, but targeted propaganda is designed to ensure that someone else gets the benefits. As though you were some domesticated animal.
karlgkk
Between adblock, piracy, and generally avoiding services, and things that make me see ads…
it’s always really jarring when I visit my parents and I’m forced to watch cable TV. It’s like being assaulted.
kachapopopow
I got assulted with a youtube ad recently I couldn't believe how bad it made me feel and I don't really know why. At least the ads on twitter are generally amusing in a way where it's some ai furries that look like kids or some outright scam, but having an ad pretend to be my friend / relate to me felt so offputting that it doesn't even make sense.
nilamo
They're very annoying all around on YouTube. Hit skip, wait five seconds, hit skip again... and if you don't, there's a several minute ad??!
ben_w
> At least the ads on twitter are generally amusing in a way where it's some ai furries that look like kids or some outright scam
Ironic, as most of the furries I know hate GenAI with a passion.
WD-42
The parent's cable is so bad. First of all, the ratio is way off. Like 60% content to 40% advertisements, and I'm being generous. Then it's SO LOUD. Maybe the decibels aren't actually higher (I think that was outlawed?) but these ad firms employ some top notch sound designers that make their ads almost impossible to tune out.
I have no idea how this is still a viable product. Coasting off Boomer's 50+ year old habits I guess?
Forgeties79
Unfortunately it is very easy to get around dB rules with aggressive loudness mixing
littlestymaar
Coming from Europe, US TV is really something dystopian. There's this constant stream of interruption to put as much ads as possible in your face, it's disgusting.
Forgeties79
IIRC the wide use of adblockers in the US constitutes the largest consumer boycott in the world. Obviously there are some caveats that come with that statement, such as how you can simply download a specific browser and you're technically participating, but still interesting to me nonetheless.
RustySwarf
As Charlie Munger pointed out, our economy does not run on greed, it runs on envy. Why? Because advertising discovered insecurity as the most effective crowbar. Advertising is the bedrock of the consumer value system, which has been the basis for the US economy since the end of World War II.
What can we as individuals do about it? Recognize advertising as hostile and banish it. Most of us, instead, are trying to assemble a worldview out of mismatched pieces of advertising, which is not working out very well. When we write and think, we are often thinking in units of advertising, which is a horrifying realization.
Even the fact that this discussion is being framed in terms of Happiness and Satisfaction is downstream of those qualities being centered by the consumer value system. Previous societies might have considered integrity or duty primary.
mrdevlar
Whenever I read anything like this, I am reminded that everyone should see Adam Curtis' "The Century of Self" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoMi95tfgP4) which is about how Sigmund Freud's nephew created the cancerous style of marketing that is ubiquitous in our society.
sharkweek
Yes, this should be required viewing in high school imo.
As someone who used to think I was generally “immune” to advertising, I have come to realize the influence goes so much deeper than “see ad on TV, go buy product” and is instead a much, much darker sense of “the only way to get rid of this anxiety is to Buy More Stuff.”
His more recent Can’t Get You Out of My Head is also fantastic about how we got from There to Here from WWII to present day.
kridsdale3
I watched this more than 10 years ago and it remains the singular top recommendation I have to anyone who wants to understand modern society.
IT IS THAT GOOD.
stuxnet79
I watched this documentary almost 10 years ago now and it changed my life.
xriddle
Yet how many of our jobs wouldn't exist without advertising ... I'm not saying it's right or wrong just a fact. Advertising is foundational to many modern industries, especially digital ones. Social platforms, media companies, search engines, news, free apps, podcasts, streaming tiers. A ton of your daily internet exists because ads bankroll the whole mess. Without advertising, half the tech economy collapses into subscription-only fiefdoms. Unfortunately if advertising vanished tomorrow, lots of companies would die, tons of jobs would evaporate, and the economy would contort into something unrecognizable.
morleytj
If advertising is no longer financially rewarding, is there not an argument that labor could transition into a different sector of the economy?
Companies based around advertising would die, yes, but they only exist in the first place because of how lucrative the activity is. Nobody is sitting around dreaming of how they could sell ads better than anyone else while not thinking of the financial compensation. At least I hope they aren't.
If someone was saying "many people have jobs in running offshore internet sports betting companies, if we put regulations on offshore internet sports betting, it would remove jobs" wouldn't the natural question be whether those industries are actually productive to have people employed in, or if it's a harmful industry overall? Generally in my view its somewhat sad that the system as a whole optimizes for advertising work rather than orienting in a way that everyone could be putting their work towards something they see as more fulfilling.
There is certainly more need for product discoverability broadly than something like online gambling, but I think the more relevant conversation is if the current advertising model is more like a local minima preventing progress towards a more economically viable method of handling product discoverability.
venturecruelty
"We can't get rid of this toxic part of society because what if people lose jobs?" has never really been a great argument. Like, maybe society could find a way to financially support people who transition to a new career (although if you've made any sort of money from ads, I'd argue that uh... you should've saved more, but whatever. Labor rights, etc.). "We ban something and then you're just out of a job" doesn't have to be what happens, it's just what typically happens. We can get creative, though! Other modes of governing society are entirely possible. We can both support people and keep them happy and healthy, while also getting rid of things like advertising. We just need to imagine a better world.
HWR_14
> the economy would contort into something unrecognizable.
You say it as if it was a self evident negative, but isnt that the goal of people who want to ban ads? To dramatically change the economy?
ben_w
With GenAI, I suspect a lot that could be ad-supported will evaporate anyway.
How can you get a reputation for a high-quality well-researched podcast(/youtuber) when your voice(/face) can be cloned by the advertiser who buys a slot somewhere in your podcast(/video) to sell some snakeoil?
Are those your friends you're seeing on social media enjoying ${brand} or supporting ${politician}? Or did your friends all leave the site years ago, and these are just fakes, legally licenced by the advertisers from the social media firm thanks to a clause in the TOS that's hard for non-lawyers to comprehend the consequences of?
yoavm
You're saying that like it was a bad thing...
marssaxman
It should not be surprising that advertising is a source of dissatisfaction, since that is literally the point: inducing a feeling of unfulfilled desire is the mechanism by which ads generate sales. It would be more surprising if advertising were found not to be a major source of dissatisfaction, since we would have trouble explaining why businesses spend so much money on it.
Jolliness7501
Thats why I singed out from ads everywhere I could. Adblocking everywhere it's possible, no legacy radio or tv - only add-free subscriptions or free alternatives, alt-apps for youtube, no social-media like f...book, twitter or (Thor forbid) tictok. I always reject any discounts, special offers when it require to agree to "marketing cominication". I block all robocalls and if any pass throu I chase down the company behind it and file complain to authorities (in my country it's illegal to contact anyone without him/her agree for it). Not everything works of course and only ads I cannot block are OOH like billboards. I support creators directly where it's worth and pay or donate for all sites/services/apps I use frequently (if applicable).
zkmon
There is a basic correlation which doesn't need data or research. Advertising is about gaining people's attention and creating familiarity for a product. People's satisfaction is about gap between their expectation and actuals. Since advertising tends to increase expectations, it would lead to more dissatisfaction. This is a direct consequence.
nathan_compton
I maintain a healthy depression without ads, the old fashioned way.
amelius
This doesn't even address the disastrous effects of overconsumption that inevitability follow from advertising. Advertising is destroying the climate and our planet.
Advertising is, quite simply, a form of abuse. It is psychic violence that leaves no outward mark but diminishes its target by attempting to replace their perceptions, judgments, intentions with its own. A society with a pragmatic regard for its own survival would ban it outright.