https://twitter.com/daviddoel/status/1616135226295750657?t=_FYrEIvcYFTOR9hsJmkOIg&s=19
https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/1616451911061803010?t=vaUJmL7IH_wkMvYvh1YT9Q&s=19
https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/1616452689012969473?t=e3FjQ8aYgR2m_0Bmynvu9w&s=19
Letthemfight.gif
Yeah because Real Men drink beer and Soy Boys use medical marijuana.
Bit of a soapbox of mine that it is a mystery to me why ads for anything addictive are allowed in any medium. You could carve out exceptions for small companies I suppose, but really, 95% of alcohol ads (for example) that you see are for mass market brands.
I have no idea if there are First Amendment issues in the US but here it wouldn’t be a problem. Tobacco and pharmaceutical advertising is already illegal.
My vague recollection from corporate law is that technically tobacco could advertise just like beer but, as part of the lawsuit the government brought against them for covering up the effects of cigarettes, they agreed to additional advertising restrictions.
Another vague recollection from the 5 to 4 podcast is that the case that gave us the idea that corporate speech should be regulated nearly like personal speech was a case where someone passed a law saying that tobacco companies couldn’t advertise within X feet of a school and other stipulations and the tobacco companies said the government was unfairly picking on them and the court agreed
I did hear an argument against legalization of drugs without a prescription in that if we did then they’d be granted the same free speech rights as beer and a world where heroin and pcp were putting out ads would be an even worse one than we have now.
Pharmaceutical advertising is legal tho.
Not in Australia. One of the jarring things about going to the US. Go from no pharma ads on TV, ever, to them being like every second ad.
How about junk food? That’s at least kind of addictive? Presumably you’ve got McDonalds adverts.
I see. Your context was ambiguous as to which country you meant. I agree that pharmaceutical advertising is bad.
Seems hard to define.
Loki’s Wager. Let’s start with the obvious ones and see how we go.
Alright, I’ll start with a couple obvious ones:
Exercise.
Social media advertising? I mean there’s not a lot of it. I would be fine with having video game advertising banned. I mean I’d be fine with banning most advertising, Modern advertising is mostly a zero-sum-game fight for consumer attention that doesn’t benefit anyone. Like whether someone drinks one indistinguishable brand of lager or another doesn’t matter to anyone, not even the person drinking it, so the billions of dollars expended shifting market share around is just deadweight loss.
Do I actually think video game advertising would get banned? That seems a very long way off.
But you’re being obtuse. When I said start with the obvious ones, I meant the ones that have widespread “Anonymous” groups of people desperately seeking help for their addiction.
Kind of an amusing self-deception that people are super concerned about the effect advertising has on warping children’s brains, “it makes them want things they don’t need!” and it’s like oh, and adults? No it’s fine we are totally rationally in command of our desires at all times, not really any such thing as creating new desires for us out of nowhere, so no problem there, everyone’s solid.
I can read what products are on the internet and I can generally sample them for myself if I want to without a lot of effort. As a consequence most advertising now is brand-focused, trying to appeal to consumer emotions. It amounts to, very literally, spending billions of dollars in an attempt to warp the minds of consumers, with virtually no actual benefit to anyone.
I think this is probably overstating it. I think it’s that adults are responsible for their choices, whether those choices are arrived at rationally or irrationally.
Advertising can be illegal if it’s factually misleading, but as you say most ads are emotional appeals that can’t be easily invalidated. I guess you could try a class action asserting that on balance a Chevy truck is more unlike a rock than like a rock but I don’t think you’d win.
The gravy train coming to an end?
https://mobile.twitter.com/thedailybeast/status/1617673922501304321
