I don’t think people, especially younger ones, understand why so many of us were drawn to the early internet. It was a new frontier, free from advertising and corporate influence. People just shared things. There was this powerful push to end information scarcity to make knowledge, art, and ideas freely accessible, without paywalls or subscriptions. There were 3 hour podcasts with people actually interested in sharing things with no fucking ads. The idea of making any money with any of it was silly stuff. Everybody thought it was silly when we started seeing ads show up. It was laughed at and people were embarrassed to do ad reads. But we ignored it. We’d soon find out how tragic a mistake that was.
Then came the musicians, the content creators, the artists and all their lawyers and with them, the advertisers. We lost everything. What started as a space for free expression was gradually reshaped into a sanitized, corporate-friendly landscape. Influencers played a huge role in that shift. They helped turn the internet into a marketplace, paving the way for brands to blend seamlessly into our lives under the guise of content. They helped create the enshitification we have today. Without them, the advertisers and lawyers wouldnt have been able to profit.
I genuinely hate what influencers have done to the internet. They don’t get enough blame.
Me too.
Hate the game, not the player. Or both, your choice.
Considering how people love running around being literal advertisement-pillars with their silly brand-names all over. “Hilf” on the front, “iger” on the back. And those logos get bigger and bigger each year. And people pay extra to be used like that. Still made by slaves anywhere. Most fashion-brands switched from quality to slaves.
Made in France/Germany became China/Bangladesh. Prices went up anyway.
Long story short: people seem to love advertisement, they even became one.
I have stopped watching regular TV about 6 years ago. We now have internet TV, occasionally I watch something if I want to, but only if I can skip ads.
My SO sometimes watches on commercial channel and leaves the ads unskipped, so I counted: 10 minutes content, 10 minutes ads, that on repeat for hour and a half. I get it, those channels live from advertisements, but does it realy have to be 1/1?
They could cram in more ads than content (Amazon does this sometimes). Ads piss me off though, slightly irrationally (I don’t buy that there’s any rationality to liking them), so, I can’t use prime video anymore. Better to rent DVDs from my library than to deal with that garbage.
I’m surprised your library still has DVD’s, the local library here hasn’t had them in a decade or so.
Oh they’re pretty awesome and about 5 mins away. DVDs, music, academic journal access, seed exchange, and several streaming services, free to library patrons.
There are a number of reasons that the far-right and corpos hate libraries. The number of services that the provide to the community (in the US) is a major part of it. Libraries in bigger cities even tend to have social workers on staff to help patrons who are homeless or have other needs. They are one of the few places that anyone is allowed to exist during daylight hours without paying.
Generally speaking the customer is the one paying for the product. For a commercial TV station, the customer is the advertiser, not the audience. The audience is the product being sold. Like IKEA felling trees to build furniture, or Exxon pumping oil, the TV station makes programmes as part of the product manufacturing process.
Also, this is a reason why public service broadcasters need to be cherished.
Moving to Canada from the UK when I was a kid was quite jarring because I couldn’t believe how many TV commercials you guys had.
If you’re 20, that’s fine. You’re young. There’s lot’s of obvious things you haven’t figured out yet.
If you’re 40…um. Yeah. You dumb.
There’s another consideration: it has to be as cheap as possible to produce. And that explains the advent of reality TV.
And it has to be as cheap as possible to make the line go up, not for actual rational or objective reasons.
Everything is an advertisement now. We even made ourselves into our own advertisements. The number 1 childhood aspiration is to become the most effective advertisement.
Subscribe to my Patreon for more quality comments!
Doesn’t matter to the suits, but it matters to the people who actually create the content.
Idk been without them for 25 years, I kinda find them fascinating as in who on earth do they think they are? But I still hate them vehemently. Especially good ones. Just silence fucking brand
ESPNs Stanley Cup play off announcers suck, so we are watching the Canadian Sports Net broadcasts.
It is so refreshing not being pushed some random medication every other spot
