I'm not the biggest fan of advertising in the world, and I make a distinction between "levels of annoyingness" and "levels of usefulness" of ads. But even at their worst, I have a pretty hard time justifying the phrase "makes people miserable" in regards to ads. Unless this article is talking about a kind of ad that I've never encountered. Blipverts[1] maybe?
For my money, if I could just get rid of any in-browser ad that starts playing audio without prompting, I'd be mostly OK with the state of ads. Note that, in this context, I'm not including any concerns about ad tracking networks, etc. I'm just talking about the actual ads themselves.
Back when I started reading HN I saw a comment mentioning that that person always muted TV ads. I started requesting my family members to mute TV ads, and once you start doing it, hearing the occasional 'unblocked' TV ad in the background becomes extremely annoying. It is really no different from someone coming into your house and camping in your living room - their sound volume and jingles are intentionally meant to make you pay attention and distract you.
Sure, no argument there. But to me, there is a huge gap between "annoying" and "makes people miserable". Miserable, to me, is the excruciating pain I had for a week after shoulder surgery. Being annoyed by a jingle is barely on the same spectrum in my book.
I think the “miserable” here is in the Buddhist sense of a bottomless pit of desire that leaves your life feeling perpetually unfulfilled. Ads are like a backhoe for making that pit deeper.
Pretty much all beauty products as well as fashion and luxury product advertising's first order of battle is to make the recipient feel miserable, and to position the goods advertised as the solution for that misery.
Pretty much all beauty products as well as fashion and luxury product advertising's first order of battle is to make the recipient feel miserable, and to position the goods advertised as the solution for that misery.
Maybe. I'm probably not the target market for most of that stuff, but that statement doesn't exactly jibe with my subjective experience. It seems to me that an ad can suggest that you could be (better looking | more fashionable | more luxurious | richer | getting laid more | whatever) without necessarily needing to make one miserable as a condition. All of those things are relative, and pretty much anybody can see an ad and think "wearing that suit would make me more appealing to women" or "wearing that lipstick would make me more appealing to guys" or whatever, without first having to believe "OMG, I am the worst of the worst, I look deplorable, blah, blah".
For my money, if I could just get rid of any in-browser ad that starts playing audio without prompting, I'd be mostly OK with the state of ads. Note that, in this context, I'm not including any concerns about ad tracking networks, etc. I'm just talking about the actual ads themselves.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_(TV_series)