The internet runs on ads.

Ad companies pay for all the “free” popular social media we use. Ad companies dictate to social media what their clients want their ads to be associated with, not associated with, and drive media of all kinds to push inflammatory and click-bait content that drives engagement and views. It’s why you indirectly can’t swear, talk about suicide, drugs, death, or violence. Sure, you technically can unless ToS prohibits it, but if companies tell their ad hosts they don’t want to be associated with someone talking about guns, the content discussing guns gets fewer ads, fewer ads = less revenue, low-revenue gets pushed to the bottom.

So lowbrow political rage bait, science denialism, and fake conspiracies drives people to interact and then gets pushed to the top because it gets ad revenue. Content that delves into critical thought and requires introspection or contemplation languishes.

Ads are destroying society because stupid and rage sells views.

  • mushroommunk@lemmy.today
    3·
    8 hours ago

    That’s an interesting take. Have an article or blog post or paper anywhere that gives into it more? Not sure I agree or disagree but it’s an interesting thought

    • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
      13·
      7 hours ago

      That is a difficult question to answer, I am not the first person to think this by any means but finding people who put it into simple terms and connect the dots is difficult.

      This is a great example of the species of brainworms I am talking about though.

      People fall in love with the story arc and the characters in these hero’s journey examples because they see themselves in the “before” phase—feeling stuck, small, and unseen.

      They crave a transformation.

      If you want to get better at selling your product or service, you have to understand that people don’t buy products or services.

      They buy transformations.

      Your customer is trying to get from point A to point B, but they don’t know how to do it on their own. If you want to sell to them, make your product or service the bridge between where they are and where they want to be.

      That’s why this storytelling structure works so well in marketing. Your customer is the protagonist, and your product/service is what helps them answer their call to adventure.

      I’m reminded of this quote:

      “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” —Henry David Thoreau

      https://thevectorimpact.com/heros-journey-examples/

      The thought terminating logic goes good advertising is storytelling --> all good storytelling is the Hero’s Journey.

      Which… I think the advertisement people are right, Hero’s Journeys are a perfect description of advertisements, they have a precise structure meant to influence you to see things a certain way. The problem is it is a suffocating regime to impose upon Storytelling as a pursuit of art and self-expression and it is killing our communal spaces at a deep level because of it. Artists are trained to only tell stories that contain the same genetic structure as advertisements because how the hell else do you earn money and respect as an artist these days but utterly optimize every aspect of your artistry to trying desperately to make some money?