I definitely consume too much dystopian content to be a fair dystopian barometer, but the sheer amount of ads being pushed my way is starting to make me feel legitimately anxious. It feels like a techno-dystopia where all of the neat and artistic elements have been extracted and then ground into dust for our corporate overlords. Even the ‘regular’ people are just trying to sell themselves. The streamers, the funny videos, the pet videos, the porn, the reposts of all of those, so much of it is just monetizing my attention.
Do ads even influence people that much? Does anyone even eat Church’s Chicken?! Do people consider switching their car insurance? I though the postmoderns were jumping the gun a little with the pictures they painted of a future with corporate logos and other advertisements spread across every visible surface, but now I have to see 5 ads and a cookie consent pop up to look up a quick definition. Watching a friend’s youtube video? 30 seconds of rapidfire ads from 15 brands. It’s starting to feel absurd. Are we going to be okay?
There are systems for musicians like BIEM and CISAC that do something similar. So systems like that are not unprecedented. I believe we need something like this for journalism too. Of course there are issues with this, but right now conformance is rewarded, while dissent or serious topics are punished on e.g. youtube with demonetization. All because of advertisement. Nothing new of course, mainstream media primary customer are advertisers too.