"They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. Fuck that."

submitted by EndlessSunflowers from (i.imgtc.ws)

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[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

You are right, banning things is not always the answer. What we need is to educate common people. For instance, we don't have to ban advertisements despite the paradigm that they are manipulative; we have to teach people to acknowledge that advertisements can manipulate them and teach them not to let advertisements mess with their heads too much.

This could render the advertisements useless because their very purpose is to "convince" people to like the product but, we have to try to make the best situation possible where there is minimum or no harm coming to either party.

[–]HopeThatHalps 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

we have to teach people to acknowledge that advertisements can manipulate them

That's a good start, but since advertising works on the subconscious, that might not make much of a difference. I think more research has to be done with regard to deciding that ads are a public health nuisance. Any solution we come up with now would be based around a limited understanding of how it psychologically effects people, because like a lot of what we know, succesful advertising comes from trial and error rather than a deeper understanding of how it works. It would touch on "thought crime".