For me: Cancelling paid subscriptions should be as easy as subscribing. I hate the fact that they actively hide the unsubscribe option or that you sometimes should have to write an e-mail if you want to unsubscribe.
For me: Cancelling paid subscriptions should be as easy as subscribing. I hate the fact that they actively hide the unsubscribe option or that you sometimes should have to write an e-mail if you want to unsubscribe.
Marketing wasn’t really a thing until sometime around the Industrial Revolution and post-WW1. Before then, we didn’t really have the capacity to produce more than what people needed. Marketing basically just consisted of “here’s my product, here’s why it’s superior to others.” But with the post-war boom and the rise in manufacturing, producers were suddenly able to out-produce the demand. So they invented marketing, to get people to buy things that they didn’t actually need. The idea of “create a problem so you can sell the solution” was born.
Yeah I get the history, I’m more commenting on the fact that nobody really said ‘Huh, is this a good idea?’, it just slowly infiltrated everywhere and like the frog in the pot of slowly-boiling water we don’t realize the shit we’re in because of it.
That’s what I think advertising ought to be. ‘This product/service exists. Here’s what a panel of independent testers (folks like Consumer Reports) has determined about its functionality, capabilities, etc.’ No music, no slogans, no ‘vibe-n-style’ or whatever, just someone describing the basic facts about the product or service. Because I don’t dispute that I have seen ads for something and been like ‘holy shit this will make my life easier’ or whatever, so I don’t want to not be able to discover products… I just also don’t want to be manipulated by the companies that have a financial incentive to push them.