Asklemmy

Please don't give them ideas. If they could figure out how to beam ads to our brains when sleeping they would.

Night sky ads.

Why have all that empty space when you can make it look like Times Square?

Sitting on a plane and the screen in front of you plays ads the whole flight.

Calm down, Satan.

I remember having a conversation with a former friend a while ago, and he, as a guy who worked for a certain company that makes most of its revenue from delivering ads, spoke about requiring use of front facing camera and using eye tracking technology to ensure you're actually watching the ads and not going somewhere else while the ads play. If you aren't looking at the ad, it will play another ad afterwards.

He spoke about it as something he is looking forward to, since it would increase revenue. Pretty sure he was pitching this idea to his boss hoping to get a promotion.

Nice try, Zuck

“This nuclear attack warning was brought to you in association with our partners at Squarespace.”

Nice try Evil Corp

Stop this thread, and burn it with fire.

Remember those mobile games where you can watch ads to get some gold and diamonds or simply pay for them with real money? Well, I can imagine a dystopian future where that logic has been applied to everything.

Wanna press an elevator button? Pay with shopping center diamonds or watch this quick ad.

Wanna try on this shirt before buying it? Ads. Is this made of cotton? Ads.

Take the escalator to the next floor? Ads.

Wanna check the info screen to figure out where you can find a restaurant in this shopping center? Ads.

Wanna unlock different parts of the menu? Ads. Wanna see the prices too? Ads. Allergens? Ads again.

Need to go to the toilet? Ads. Want some toilet paper? More ads.

If you encounter this literally every 30 seconds, spending some money on those shopping center diamonds suddenly becomes a very appealing idea.

On the outside of the mall you see a punk looking guy with a Molotov cocktail in his hand. You feel a sudden urge to join in whatever he is up to.

Anyway, if you want some more suffering and sadness, simply dump the first lines to GPT and ask it to take this dystopia to its logical conclusion. It could get pretty wild.

Kill it all with fire

Ad-based apps on your phone.

It’s been done already, you say? Not like this: the front-facing camera is used to detect eye gaze. A counter on the screen starts at 30 seconds and only counts down while you are looking at the screen. If you look away, the counter, and the ad, pauses. The app doesn’t continue until you’ve watched the entire ad.

A MLM style whisper campaign app your friends can run where it actually listens in on the conversation and allows them to make money for dropping product mentions and recommendations to you and others during hang outs and in person conversations with the recording to tag and prove they actually mentioned it.

A typing game like Mario Teaches Typing or Typing of the Dead except all the sentences are ad slogans or brand names.

Emergency phone lines have ads at the beginning of the call to help pay for emergency services (because the government won't pay for them).

Revoke regulation that requires disclaimers on paid endorsements (in other words, you have no idea if someone is endorsing a product because they like it, or because they were paid to talk about it).

Digital piracy is now a felony on par with drug felonies.

Ad blocking is now digital piracy.

Copyright is now indefinite, applied retroactively. An agency is formed to pursue copyright infringement on behalf of deceased rights holders and defunct companies.

Criticism is no longer considered free speech if it leads to direct or indirect economic damage ("your rights end where mine begin!")

Referencing or speaking about a copy-protected work in-depth constitutes copyright infringement. However, enforcement is up to the rights holder except in the case of deceased individuals or defunct companies.

The last three may seem tangential, but together it means companies can take action against you for talking negatively about their advertisements and products, regardless of how old they are. Now companies like Disney can use copyright to permanently erase things like The Song of the South or Walt Disney's Nazi boner.

Advertising is allowed on voter ballots (the voting process can be expensive after all).

Politicians must publicly endorse companies which endorse them (it's only fair). Failing to do so is considered a form of ad blocking.

Public schools may include advertisements in their curriculum to augment teacher salaries. There are no restrictions on how many advertisements are presented, how they are presented, or the extent of their presentation. Choosing not to present an advertisement that is part of the curriculum is considered a form of ad blocking. "You have to pay teachers somehow, and I'll be damned if it comes out of my pocket".

I could probably come up with more, but this is making me depressed.

Two videos for you to watch:

Hyper-Reality, a PoV short film featuring an overqualified gig worker in a world of ubiquitous, ad-laden and heavily enshittified AR. https://youtu.be/YJg02ivYzSs

This Euro-News article which features a Murdoch-owned advertising agency trying to get train windows turned into bone-conducting acoustic transmitters so weary travellers are forced to listen to ads as they resr their heads. https://youtu.be/1KZATgg7bJo

You have to watch an ad to crank your car.

Every time you bring your car to a full stop while it is running, an ad plays through your audio system and displays on your radio.

You have to watch an ad to make a phone call.

When your phone rings, it plays an ad jingle, call JG Wentworth 877 cash now.

When you send a text message or write a text post to an online system, an ad is injected with your text post so that readers in order to read what you wrote also have to read the ad.

If you have Smart lights or anything smart in your home, in order to use it you have to watch an ad.

In order to pay for something with a credit card you have to watch an ad on the credit card machine and click one of the choices that are offered to you.

Smart pillows that play hypnotic ads at you in your sleep.

Your electric toothbrush requires an ad to be played the whole time it is being used, and if you brush your teeth for less than the length of the ad, then they take a dollar from you.

Some guy comes to your house and screams logos and add quotes at you all of the time. If you try to get him to shut up he murders you and your entire family.

Replace the guy with a robot.

The thing is. Any advert I hear is typically for a product I will never purchase. And TBH even if it was a category of thing I might purchase, the fact that I’m being assaulted by an advert means I am guaranteed not to purchase that thing.

Smart contact lenses and also smart built-in lenses that work like cataract surgery lenses.

These are given away free and basically make traditional optometry have to change to a lower volume higher cost model. We also outlaw lasik on the grounds that it is more dangerous than smart lense implants.

The smart lenses track you and interact with personalised location specific advertiser content at each surveillance point, allowing them to show ads directly to your retina.

Some 'innovator' writing all this down.

1 and 2 seem very possible. But 2 may lead to more piracy. So anti-policy lobbying may happen too.
The ones can be gradually introduced.

5 sounds fun to exploit. Could just record myself staring at the screen on a loop, then loop the audio back to input, leave it on 24/7 and reap whatever godawful "benefits" come from having a great ad watching score.

A transparent ad centred on your mouse cursor.

If technology wasn't an issue: Dream ads. Naked at school? Calvin Kleins got you covered.

Brain implants that steal your thought patterns, which then get fed into some artificial intelligence that can create the perfect ad for your to see, which then gets directed straight into your brain with the same implant so you're pretty much forced to buy it. Maybe they can straight up alter your thoughts directly so you want to buy something, skipping the need for ads.

Oh wait... I'm probably just describing what Elon is up to in the long run.

I’m reminded of a classic greentext.

PLEASE DRINK VERIFICATION CAN TO CONTINUE

I for one, am severely disappointed that i do not have relevent and targeted ads to view, while i am filling out online applications for jobs. i also still don't see ads when i put the same information again on a paper application, as part of their company's interview process or when filling out the tax paperwork if i get hired and i haven't gotten ads yet when applying for food stamps due to the job not paying anything close to enough to survive off of and you know, come to think of it, i have not once seen an ad on any of my termination letters or paychecks either. actually, that's probably because i never get either of those, they just tell me to stop ringing the bell and hand them the bucket of cash or tell me to return the wendy's uniform within a week or i get a $35 fine deducted from my last paycheck and that i'm no longer allowed on the property after what happened behind the dumpster but that's another story, i digress.

they should have ads on cash too. just because some people only use plastic cards and NFC to pay for things, doesn't mean everyone does. poor people have a right to be bombarded with ads from their choice of currency, even if it is for things they cannot afford. it is a grave injustice of equal rights, that when i'm holding a cardboard sign on the freeway onramp begging for change, the pittance of coins i'm being pelted with aren't blaring slogans from tiny built in speakers. when i'm dancing at the topless bar, the greasy singles being crumpled up and thrown at me don't even play ads that sync up with the song i dance to and never, not one fucking time has my song and dance been interrupted for an important advertising announcement, it's only ever interrupted by the strip club staff telling me to leave and never come back and that guys can't dance to 'touch myself' by the divinyls no matter how flexible they are. i digress.

this is sarcasm mixed with weak attempts at humor. nothing should be considered truthful or accurate however some might be based on true events which have been altered or exagerrated for effect. This message was brought to by typing and no AI was harmed or used in the making of this comment.

No one is allowed to wear "work clothes" anymore, like a suit & tie or any professional type of clothing like that. Instead you will be required to wear clothing covered with printed ads in ALL professions. The police, doctors, bus driver, newscaster, everyone everywhere while at work.

this amber alert alert is brought to you by alerts-r-us!

...

this amber alert is brought to you by alerts-r-us!

Motion activated cemetery headstones.

The medical field is ripe for some intrusive ads to boost revenues! Possibilities are endless:

Ad-supported hearing aids ("this conversation will resume after a quick message from our sponsors!")

Pacemakers - want to watch an ad for 100 more free heartbeats?

Surgery - this will leave a visible scar, but how about we make the cut look like the Amazon logo ?

Implants - click the nipple and watch an ad to re-inflate the left breast for 10 more days

If this is the path of society, I'll go live off nature completely off grid.

Have groups of quadcopters/does fly down streets over cars stuck at stoplights and show ads and/or play ads at them.

You could wait for the light to go red, then form up in a wall over the crosswalk to show the drivers waiting down the street your ad. They're just going to be looking at the stoplight anyway, so that's free eyeball time, right?

Give a discount on food purchases so long as people agree to having every purchase tracked abd their data sold to marketing companies so they can figure out how to manipulate people into buying more shit they don't need.

People's food purchases are already scanned in before they buy them, so all that's needed is to get people to scan in some kind of card to connect their purchases to their identity. A small discount can be offered so people will fill out a form connecting their identity to the card and then every time they scan the card with their purchases we can track everything they buy forever.

Oh wait, that's actually already commonplace.,

Replace the glass cooler doors in the drink section with huge screens that display ads abd obscure the contents, then use a sketchy motion sensor to trigger a delayed screen full of what's probably inside the cooler.

Oh wait nvm, they've already got that.

Mandatorily implanted lenses in your eyes that track your location and collect all the data off everything you see, trading it out over Wi-Fi while downloading ads for your surroundings in real time while simultaneously leaking your private information, telling the government everything, and ratting you out to your employer and insurance company.

But only if it's cheaper than a brain chip that does the same things.

[off topic] "The Space Merchants" by Frederik Pohl and CM Kornbluth. In a polluted future where the wealthy ride in rickshaws, an advertising company is given the job of selling the human race on emigration to Venus.

It was written back in the 1950s, and it's funny to see how some of the things the writers thought of as satire became normal business practice.

It's disgusting how many things people can still do without being exposed to advertising.

Loudspeakers: Imagine how many speakers there are in the world, and how often they're not playing anything. All loudspeakers should always play ads if not utilized for anything else.

Edit: I went hiking last weekend, and while out there the silence was deafening. Out in the wild, where it's relatively quiet, we'd only need to place speakers every few hundred meters to efficiently broadcast ads to hikers and such.

I would auction shelf space at my mega chain grocery store to large brands. The highest bidder would have the opportunity to buy up all the shelf space in order to bury any potential competition. The bidder could create 100s of different labels of essentially the same goddamn product, in order to maintain the illusion of choice, maximize consumer confusion, and thus maximize the time a customer spends thinking about the shelf-dominant brand, for some otherwise dead-simple purchase, such as toothpaste.

You know ad-supported kindles? Expand that to phones, TVs computers. Anything that can show or play an ad while it is off or when you turn it on. It's free real estate!

Open source housing units when?