alt Hacker NewsMy father told me: “If they are advertising it you don’t need it”
Everyone is influenced by advertising even if it’s third hand: “oh I like that (thing) where did you get it, oh (person) saw an ad and bought one and I tried it too”
But I agree that if you inculcate a default position of rejecting things that are advertised you can avoid being pulled into wasting your energy on unnecessary things
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The truth today is that almost all consumer products produced today is crap we don’t need. It’s almost literally manufactured landfill, since that’s where most of it will end up.
That’s a wise remark and I haven’t thought about it like that, but it’s entirely true!
I always try to avoid ads as much as possible and not having any social media really helps. But going to use this remark from now on.
> Everyone is influenced by advertising even if it’s third hand
Expanding on this.
"Wanna go eat somewhere? Like McDonald's or something?" -> McDonald's is suggested offhandedly[1], but that's only because it's already somewhere in the back of the person's mind, and it's already associated with "eating". It's only "already" there because the person is aware of it. And they're aware of it for whatever reason (one of which could be advertising, but who knows!).
The endgame for advertising is when people become blind to ads, either because they become used to them, or because they hate them so much they "ignore" them (or so they tell themselves). So in both those situations they completely block out the "ad" part of it, and "I saw an ad about a thing that..." becomes "Wasn't there a thing that...?").
[1]: Maybe even defensively, like "if we don't find anything better (or we're not in the mood for anything in particular) there's always this option as a last resort".