this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2024
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[–] [email protected] 181 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (7 children)

In the US we have legalized gambling commercials now

[–] [email protected] 116 points 1 week ago (5 children)

That's nothing compared to the pharmaceuticals being pushed constantly in ads.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I don’t know how anyone watches live news with all the drug ads

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Old people. Hence all the drug ads.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I got my parents set-top boxes with Netflix and cancelled their cable and they still mostly watch broadcast TV, with tons of ads. At this point, I dunno WTF is wrong with them -- it's as if they're addicted to having the worst experience possible.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

They just don't want to choose. They want the TV on to fill the silence, not to watch a show. Maybe to watch the "news".
Sometimes I miss the days of flow TV, you just turn it on and that's it. No browsing the catalogue you just get whatever is on.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I don’t know how anyone watches anything with ads

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago (3 children)

It's always so weird because it's not like you can go to your primary doctor and say "I want X drug" right? Like, if there was a reason to give you a drug for something the doctor would have prescribed it. Also not ask you how you felt about them, just that here is X drug for your Y problem. If that doesn't work we try Z.

Or do people actually swap doctors over and over for months until they get one who says "ok dude"?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago

You absolutely can, unless it's Adderall. For some fucking reason you tell a doctor that you've been on Adderall for years and it works better for you than the alternatives you've been prescribed in the past and they treat you like a drug seeker instead of someone who's been treating her adhd for over two decades

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The latter is called "doctor shopping" and it absolutely happens.

The goal of the advertisement is to have the patient be interested, not the doctor. Admittedly some doctors are not up to date on the latest obscure cutting edge treatments, so there is some possible benefit. However, most doctors are capable of performing cost benefit analyses and understanding side effects, but when a patient comes in asking for a medication, it definitely tips the scales towards the medication.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Well, also there are medical sales people / pharma sales reps, usually attractive women, that go to doctors offices, take them out to lunch, and give them a ton of shit like free samples and golf clubs and whatnot. Have the product name recognition out there from the commercial helps with all this.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I don't think I've ever "asked my doctor about ___" because of something I saw in a commercial.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I rejected my medical care provider’s (I think it was a nurse practitioner) advice because of what I saw in an ad, and it did not go well. They were incredibly offended that I had an opinion and dismissive of the idea that IUDs could lead to scarring, which I got from the ad itself. I didn’t end up with any birth control that day, but the next month, planned parenthood gave me the ring instead of a first generation copper IUD.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I would have definitely gotten a second opinion via some internet searching on anything I saw in a commercial long before I talked to a doctor about it.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

Oh, I did do that. I just wouldn’t have looked into it if it weren’t for the advertisement warning.

I think birth control is in a weird category here though, because it’s (generally) totally elective and there’s a bunch of different kinds that work differently for different people, so it’s probably pretty standard for people to have preferences about it in a way that they probably don’t for various types of, say, cholesterol medication.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Hell, some have their own jingles

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago (2 children)

All I see on what my wife watches is gambling and medication commercials that say nothing about what the medication does but that I should ask my doctor if I need it.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago

Finally. I was super annoyed every time I had to go to gamblingsite.net just to get me addicted to gambling with free money, just to trick me to going to gamblingsite.com where I had to spend real money.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Same in UK / Australia it seems.

We have an expat TV streaming option at home for the wife and holy fuck bingo ads galore on those channels.

Also, add for insurance for funeral costs? Wtf?

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[–] knobbysideup 5 points 1 week ago

And still have prescription drug commercials.

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[–] [email protected] 90 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Somehow businesses have managed to convince people it’s normal to waste countless hours of their life listening to someone else tell them what they need to buy so they can be happy and fulfilled. We’re bombarded by it. Radio, TV, internet, social media, busses, billboards, flyers, junk mail, email spam. It’s everywhere. It completely pervades our society and lives. It’s pervasive and it’s anything but normal.

It’s a sign of a seriously sick culture, and somehow we’ve all become brainwashed and numb to its harmful effects.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 week ago (3 children)

You might find Edward Bernays and his impact on advertising interesting.

One of the numerous problems for America’s magnates was the consumption of the average citizen. Many only purchased what they really needed, a behaviour which moguls wanted to change. The Wall Street banker Paul Mazur summarised this in a particularly straightforward manner: ‘We must shift America from a needs to a desires culture’, he wrote in 1927 in the Harvard Business Review. ‘People must be trained to desire, to want new things even before the old have been entirely consumed.’

https://www.historytoday.com/miscellanies/original-influencer

https://www.npr.org/2005/04/22/4612464/freuds-nephew-and-the-origins-of-public-relations

https://theconversation.com/the-manipulation-of-the-american-mind-edward-bernays-and-the-birth-of-public-relations-44393

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

Economy goes brrr. He needs a special circle of hell. And perhaps if not him it would have been someone else, but he was the one who brought upon consumerism, planned obsolescence, and the whole "keeping up with the Jones".

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago

Christ on a bike, imagine finding out Goebbels used your methods to murder millions, and you still didn't realise that you're a cunt 😬

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

With exceptions of few countries, I believe the modern society is closer to the novel Brave New World than 1984 story. People have been convinced to accept control by way of pleasure. To forget the mundane and realities of life in exchange for gratification by constant triggering of our own biochemistry that induces the feeling of pleasure. We are encouraged buy the things we don't need to impress the people we don't like, so that consumer spending will keep the all-mighty economy kept being fed. But if we complain that we don't have enough left for essentials, then we are told it's because we keep buying iPhone or avocado toast. The media will say that the economy is slowing down because of less consumer spending, but then chastise us for doing the exact same thing we are told to do: spend and spend.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Imagine a generation of people centering even their nostalgia around commercial products instead of interpersonal relationships and life experiences. Those things are replaced by products that are becoming crucial to creating it, like game consoles, commercials, printed media - just abysmal

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[–] [email protected] 55 points 1 week ago (5 children)
[–] CancerMancer 10 points 1 week ago

Please also include all the bullshit random toys, card games, loot boxes, and other garbage people like to pretend are not gambling.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

Don't forget lootboxes

[–] GhiLA 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

You know. Just turn it off entirely.

nod

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Muffins?

I'm not sure I've ever seen an advert for a muffin

[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 week ago (9 children)

Just in case it's not obvious, they mean an English muffin, a kind of flat bread roll. In the UK that's what they sell for breakfast at McDonald's (sausage and egg, bacon and egg etc).

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago (3 children)

You know, this is the first time I've witnessed a country refer to something we call [country] [thing] as just [thing]

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (3 children)

A sausage and egg McMuffin does not look like a muffin. It actually does look like an English muffin because that's what it is.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

Oooh right of course. I've not had a maccies breakfast in a while and kinda forgot. Most breakfast places I've ever been to just sell "baps", "rolls" or "butties" even if they end up serving it on a muffin roll

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Next, they will make healthy food affordable, right ? Right ?????

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

Centrist government says: We've done the lefty thing. Leaving that in place is a righty thing, so no. Balance

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

Best they can do is make junk more expensive than healthy food.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago

This is probably for the best.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

Finally. It always baffeed me that it's legal to advertise bread covered sugar to children

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Odd to hear of old Blighty coming out with a level-headed policy after the last decade or so of wank governance.

[–] funkless_eck 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Labour government.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

What's wrong with muffins? Meh, who cares. Muffins sell themselves by being muffins.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

This somehow makes me want to go and order a burger

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Let's see if it helps the obesity problem.

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