I’m also in possession of original hand-written letters by Jesus Christ himself, inside the original envelope complete with the “par avion” stamp that my neighbour gifted me.

“No give, only take“ - stack overflow’s license.

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

Well yes, but how did we get here? The same forces that brought us are still working to keep wage slavey alive and well.

Free movement of capital, weakened unions and ceaseless propaganda pitting people against each other (welfare queens, immigrants are taking your jobs, eating the cats and dogs, work harder and you’ll be rich too, these other people are lazy, stupid, bad genes, wrong religion, the rich are better/smarter than you etc) - that’s how that happened.

There’s only one enemy and it’s not other wage earners.

The reason why the job market sucks is that unions got defanged and international capital movement freed from the 80s onwards.

That’s why life for working people took 3 steps backwards compared to our parents and grandparents who could buy a house, go on holidays and have a boat on a factory wage. While we are going to have trillionaires soon and the only thing that’s cheaper is the fuel of capitalism: telecoms and wages.

The problem has never been another wage earner - the problem is pitting us against each other and us taking the bait.

They need some starter packs like BlueSky because all I’m seeing are some art photography highly likely ai generated - and I have no idea where to find content that has any value. On searching the hashtags I’m getting mastodon posts containing links that can’t be clicked.

Thanks for the trip. Any recommendations for best value for money hardware?

I’m also the signal guy amongst my friends and family. There are dozens of us!

Black Panther.

It had so much hype in the media, i was so excited to watch it. It turned out to be rather boring and forgettable.

I’ll believe AI can replace engineers when I see NVIDIA firing them. But like the graphic says, the manager’s job seems a lot easier to replace instead.

How about: I’m sorry to hear that, are you holding up ok?

I liked Rogue One too. It had some weight. That Darth Vader close up fight scene at the end was the first time I recognised him as a terrifying force and not a cartoonish bad guy.

‘the Voices in the pipe’ is horror in 5 words.

At least the Sphinx was a credible threat.

The problem is that most of us have swallowed the ‘competence uber alles’ ideal that school fed us through exams and scoring, when the game really is mostly politics (as in interpersonal relationships). So we are understandably disappointed when the incompetent get promoted through brown nosing or luck, when we should be reevaluating the rules of the game.

Yes, some people will literally waste 100x more resources, in mental energy and time, than the price of admission to complain.

But my point was that this type of criticism can be ignored - if you get 1000 sales and 2 people turn out to be dickheads you shove them in the (mental) bin.

I hope this is clever marketing from the developer because I had never heard of this game until now and also because I can’t for the life of me figure out why anyone would abuse an indie developer for $2.

I understand some people might do that, but they’d have to be a tiny percentage.