30 minutes with a stranger

I'm increasingly convinced that social isolation is the single great social ill of our time. I am not one for "respecting others' opinions" at all, make no mistakes, if someone believes something incorrect - or worse - then they need to be corrected. But so much of the hate simmering away like a pot about to boil over is the result of loneliness. The evidence on this is startingly clear.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235215462...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027795362...

https://www.psychiatrist.com/news/hate-lies-and-loneliness-f...

Had a chat about this with a friend yesterday.

In richer societies you can afford to be alone. This isn't good for tribal beings, humans didn't evolve as lone wolves. Even something as cooking for more than one person involves so much interaction.

At the lower end of the global income scale , you can't afford to be alone in your giant house. You might need to share communal goods.

Not everyone, but just having a role in society can be a major help for many people. The biggest crime of the modern era is the disposable human. You work for an anonymous corporation, that does some nonsense you can't even hope to understand, in exchange for currency, to support the basics of your existence.

You don't get to have any real status in that, for example In many places there was just one or two bread makers for the entire community. Baking bread isn't the most prestigious job, but you matter.

Tell me, fellow techy, working on serving ads. Who exactly would be disappointed if you failed in your duties today. Would anyone in your community be upset that they didn't get as many advertisements

I agree with 99.9% of what you wrote. It’s presented very clearly. We are social animals even if we don’t like to admit it.

A while ago I would say I agree 100%, but more recently I learned that ads have value. Therefore i can’t agree with the final sentence in this post. It’s not easy to recognize but I’d like to try to share how I see it now.

Any time you think or say one of these things, it means that someone did not do a good job advertising:

- I would have gone to that concert but did not know about it

- It was that cheap on sale? Too bad I did not hear about it a week ago.

- DeVaughn’s closed!? I completely forgot about that restaurant. They had great food.

- Why didn’t anyone tell me earlier that there is a tool for easily finding a time for a meeting.

Advertising can be valuable. When done right, it does not have to be intrusive or annoying. This does not mean that every job provides value, but not knowing about something can cause people to feel negatively. Marketing is telling people about things.

I do not disagree with you entirely, but I feel this almost borders on self-delusion.

The sole purpose of ads is to (probabilistically) shift the targets spending behavior in favor of the one buying the ads, nothing more, nothing less.

While ads can have utility from the victims point of view (contain relevant information), this is entirely incidental.

If you want product updates or information, getting that from dedicated, independent 3rd parties is preferable in literally every situation I can think of.

I disagree that this is the sole purpose of ads. I can see how people arrive at that opinion, but I feel it is narrow and incomplete. With a little restrospection and introspection, anyone can see examples in their own life where marketing had another purpose.

Marketing can take many forms. Many people narrowly define it as "spam emails" or "unsolicited phone calls." Those are also marketing, but there is so much more. Marketing first and foremost informs. It can inform you that the problem that you have has even has a ready solution. It can inform you about the name of the product that solves your problem. It can inform you about alternative products that also solve your problem. Or it can reinforce and expand your existing opinions and believes. What you call the sole purpose is only one of these broad purposes of advertising.

Remember the time you learned of a particular programming library that does the thing that you wanted to do? Without marketing, you would not have learned about it.

Have you ever gone on a trip to a new place? How did you decide how you will spend your time? It was either because you researched things online and found websites that told you about those things. Or you saw a brochure at your hotel. Or an ad at the airport.

Think about how you learned about your favorite web framework. It was likely through word-of-mouth advertising.

Why do you drink (coke / pepsi / fav. brand of tea / fav. brand of coffee)? What formed your opinion was some kind of marketing, either directly, or indirectly.

Many things we do and believes we hold are because of one form of marketing or another.