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But the gas station owners are less interested in providing music, and far more excited about the prospect of force-feeding me advertisements.

Elevator owners are already there, the ones I use all have advertising screens in them just like the gas pumps.



These have been a thing for years and years now in Las Vegas. A little screen shouting ads at you for shows, restaurants, etc.

Somehow it didn't bother me then, because everything in that godforsaken city is loud and obnoxious. So it just kinda fit in.

But if elevators at typical office buildings or apartment complexes start doing this? We're doomed.


Office buildings near me have them, they try to make them appear as "infotainment" to quote Otis in the article.

A news headline and then ads for everything from food to cars to podcasts. Another headline, more ads.


Oh my god I forgot about that. Yeah, the high-rise my old company was in had those as well. A cheery, "Here's what's happening in the world" with some quick headlines, then an ad for Jimmy Fallon or something.

We were on the 45th floor, so there was plenty of captive time.


> We were on the 45th floor, so there was plenty of captive time.

The biggest company that puts the TVs in elevators is literally called “Captivate.”


Helsinki city transit does that, and there's zero attempt at sync. So an interesting headline pops up, and then maybe about 500ms in it cuts to a wildly animated ad for some crap or another. So it's not just irritating, it is aggressively obnoxious. You wanted to read this story ? HAH HAH, sucker!


> But if elevators at typical office buildings or apartment complexes start doing this? We're doomed.

The high-rise building I worked in several years ago put ad screens in the elevators. No sound, fortunately - but still! Video ads in your face, on the way to work, on the way to lunch, up and down, over and over, every day? It was more than I could stand.

I bought a roll of privacy film, cut pieces sized to the screens, and kept them in my bag. Every time I was alone in the elevator, I'd pull one out and glue it to the screen. Ahh, tranquility: the ads dissolved into a meaningless colorful blur.

Of course the maintenance folks would scrape the film off whenever they found it, but I just glued it back on, over and over... for months.


They already did this in commerical buildings in HK, luckily they are muted banner-like advertisements.


Can't ride the subway or even take a piss without having a screen with ads running in your face.


Pisses me off in London. It costs say £2.50 to take a journey, but the adverts reduce that price to £2.30.

Adverts on trains are even worse, I pay £100+ for a ticket and have to suffer the adverts because they want to get another 50p or whatever.

So I'll drive instead. Although the M6 seems to have more and more adverts in fields along it as time does on.

When I'm dictator of the world I'll ban all adverts, they are a drain on society.


Back in the day places used to clip daily-local newspaper above urinal. The "business" bars had WSJ.


At the gas pumps around here (Seattle) someone is labelling the unmarked mute button with a marker (right side second button from the top).


I'm not sure what happened, but out here every single gas station got rid of that. Especially the screen above the pump.


Not always. Press them all till it stops.


power drill also works


Just this is reason enough to go EV and charge mostly at home. But you know the fast charger networks will try this - but it takes enough time to charge that the user walks away for coffee and bathrooms, so the audience is much less captive


My favorite thing about these is that the content network's brand name is Captivate. As in a literally captive audience.


"just like gas pumps"

If your country doesn't have those (yet), it almost reads like satire.




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