“I can’t believe the fucking idiot we helped put in charge is an actual fucking idiot surrounded by other fucking idiots. Wait, what does that say about me? Erm… probably nothing.”

Then they’ll send their kids to live and study in Europe like third world oligarchs do with their kids, “I want all the benefits of liberal multiculturalism and rule of law for my offspring but not for my subjects”.

Sorry, it was not my intent to offend, I’m never looking for an argument - just look at my post history.

I got that you gave credit for what you found novel, and cracked a couple of jokes which were quite amusing, even though I wasn’t sure if you were actually considering them as possibilities or just having fun but even without that part it I would just have answered on the merits of your position without argument.

I don’t usually share laughs with people I argue with and I started my reply with a laugh to show that I’m sharing your willingness to argue in good faith. Maybe it came across mean spirited.

I’m really confused about what part of my reply was confrontational. I get that most of the conversation’s content is usually non verbal so perhaps you read it in a confrontational tone that was not intended - it was more ribbing or amused incredulousness in the spirited discussion intent and not at all “how dare you” or yelling.

Now on to the merits of the discussion:

Look, pulling Ancient Rome and churches and flowers and birds as an examples has a common thread, and that is to argue my conclusion in the last comment. That in any environment of competition for resources were attention plays a role in their distribution you’ll find advertising.

If the examples from recorded human history are to be cast aside as too soon then what about pre human examples from nature.

That was the crux.

Now you find the floral and animal examples as irrelevant because you make a claim that they are symbiotic so they benefit both parties - but I don’t find that convincing as there are not just two parties, or only those examples and also that was not the point.

The point is the competition for resources where attention plays a role in the distribution and how advertising emerges between competitors and the audience that will provide them with the desired resource or the means for it.

Whether it is to the benefit or the detriment of the receiver or an unsuccessful advertiser that is not very relevant. After all not all human advertising is detrimental, most is symbiotic. Buying this pack of chewing gums vs another or none, or this mouse trap or spending your time listening to one genre of music vs another doesn’t necessarily hurt you and might even benefit you in some way.

But a more apt comparison if you want the yard stick to be non beneficial advertising are the million ways that advertising in nature has ill intent - leading one of the parties to their demise: from Venus flowers, to angler fish, to camouflage, to fake mating calls, to fake food and hundreds of other examples.

But humanity had been free of current forms of advertising for 99.9% of its existence

Current forms yes for sure, as most of our current communication methods are new.

But advertising in general? That simply cannot be true. Yes the earliest examples we can find are from early human civilisations a fraction of the estimated age of humanity (however you want to define it, but let’s say Homo sapiens) but if you want to argue that…

The advertising people are referencing here is the modern kind targeted at humans in order to manipulate them.

…Modern brained humans were not trying to manipulate other humans in non mutually beneficial ways, either with whatever form of communication was available or with other traps when nature does it at its most basic forms and when I see little kids do it to each other from a very young age then the onus of the argument requires to either explain in detail how are humans not a part of a nature where this naturally emerges or what a society without advertising actually looks like.

It’s a bit late over here so let’s hope my rumbling is somewhat coherent.

Haha! New is a relative term but really? 300k BCE? Reverting to pre organised society to avoid advertising?

Maybe we should go to pre human times, oh wait, walk through a forest and all you see is flowers advertising themselves to insects and birds advertising their singing abilities to each other.

So long as there’s competition for resources and attention plays a role in that distribution something will find a way to attract that attention.

My point is that the premise of the article is untrue - harking to a past that never was.

Don’t church bells shove advertising down your ears? How about if I open a competing church with louder bells? What if I open a donut shop and I ring bells to notify you that a fresh batch is ready?

“No more bells then”, cool.

How about mosques? No bells, just a guy screaming from a tall balcony. And another and another.

Even in communist Russia you had propaganda ads everywhere.

There are plenty of ways currently of blocking most ads out of online media anyway - though underhanded means like product placement etc still sip through.

The idea that advertising is a new invention is nonsense.

Yes, it had different forms but it was there.

Eg: What are the priests if not sales people and what are the Sunday bells if not calls to action, and what are the icons and statues if not aspirational advertising and fomo?

What are shop windows? What are branding marks?

Here is advertising in Ancient Rome

Tbf, Signal, and most modern chat clients with multi-device syncing are not great for opsec.

When it comes to privacy from mass surveillance or using your metadata to mine demographic preferences who you are talking to etc Signal sits at the top of generally available chat clients.

But it’s geared for the convenience and privacy of the average user not military security.

Eg: when it comes to group chats you just have to get one of the members of the chat to fall for a device syncing link, for then the whole group chat future messages to become available to the attacker. What’s more, no admin or other user of the chat gets to have approval or visibility privileges or notification of a new synced device for that chat or any info about the status of each of the devices on that chat.

Is this where Google gets to pretend that their news aggregation is about news or profit and not about running social experiments to see what tracks public interest or being in a position to shape public opinion by surfacing the news it chooses but also without paying for content?