When did advertising become so pervasive and invasive? I don’t think there’s a place on earth that does not have an ad staring you in the face. Relentless messages assault the senses that continually try to seduce you to buy, buy, buy. It seems that everyone who has anything they deem worthwhile now pitches something. The internet has spawned thousands of ads and they suddenly appear from nowhere.
I have been on a site trying to get information about a medical issue and suddenly a box appears telling me about a new mattress that helps me lose weight while I’m sleeping. Yes, I’m being ridiculous, but a great many of the ads are ludicrous. They remind me of the old west when a snake oil charmer rode into town with an elixir that was supposed to increase virility, remove warts, and heal gunshot wounds. You essentially can sell anything now and make promises about it with little concern that anyone will stop you.
The FDA may eventually get around to it after several people are poisoned or paralyzed, but that takes years and the perpetrator is long gone living in a mansion somewhere in the South Seas.
When I first went on face book there were some ads sprinkled here and there, but now they are larger and some are animated. I find them incredibly intrusive and distracting. I realize that they need to make money, but from what I gathered from the media the guys who own it are multi billionaires. Do they really need dancing bears selling grass skirts to increase business? Will it eventually become a site that is more about advertising than connecting with like-minded individuals. I often feel that selling yourself or your product has become the new religion. Whatever happened to “word of mouth”? When something is really good you tell everyone you know about it and it takes on a life of its own. Is it necessary to put your name on everything from napkins to toilet paper to have people recognize who and what you do? Is it possible that a job well done will actually get you more jobs? Those words were my mothers’ along with “the proof is in the pudding”! And I don’t know about you but I’ve tasted some lousy pudding that I believed was going to be great because the advertiser said so. There just might be a lesson there.