Sometimes I feel like if I do so I’m basically serving as an ad, and I don’t really care for that, especially if later I find that the business was scummy in some ways (which is often the case, especially later as it changes leadership/ownership).
If you do, how do you deal with it?
This is mostly a symptom of being online too much and seeing enough ads to think critically about them.
People have talked about the tools they use for about as long as we’ve had both tools and language. I think its fine to just talk about stuff and not need to worry about your impact on capitalist society while doing it.
This is mostly a symptom of being online too much and seeing enough ads to think critically about them.
Would this apply even in the case of an avid ad-blocking person? At least that’s my situation, so what I’m seeing is less the ad-ridden web and more what remains, which is still a lot of discussion of commercial stuff.
I guess I’m thinking along the lines of the “What the hell is water?” story in a way.
I get what you mean, but my statement wasn’t really about how someone can escape the matrix by seeing enough advertising to realize that its poisioning society and wanting to escape that.
Its more that people would still talk about their commercial products even if there werent ads for it. Thats just a human experience thing.
Advertising muddies the water a whole bunch here because someone has taken that moment of human connection where you talk about a tool that fixed a problem you had, or some food you tried that was really good into something to make money.
Basically your choices are:
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Talk about the things with people and ignore the commercial implications.
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Be riddled with anxiety over a conversation accidentally making a few extra dollars for CocaCola or Amazon.
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Somehow totally dismantle the capitalist system and remove the profit incentives from human conversations involving things you can purchase.
TLDR: you can’t totally avoid capitalism so focus on your own happiness rather than worrying about who might be making money from the things youd be doing anyway.
Ads are convincing people to buy something they hadn’t considered.
If I’m making a recommendation, it’s because I’m sharing it with people who are either asking for a solution, or have the same problem I solved with the product. And not because I own a bunch of their data and inferred what “solutions” I could sell them.
There’s a big difference that the thought hadn’t ever crossed my mind.
Not if I’ve vetted the product and feel like they offer a decent value, in one form or another.
I never feel conflicted when I drink a nice, refreshing Dr. Pepper©. 😉
Not in the very rare case where the positivity is warranted because the product is decent, appropriately priced, and not too shittified.
