A person who had recently moved to the United States shared their frustration about the amount of advertising in a Reddit post. The user wrote about becoming exhausted by the constant exposure to ads in a post shared on the r/AskAnAmerican subreddit. The post had drawn 954 comments as of publication.
The post was titled, “Are you not exhausted of continuous advertising?” The user began by writing that they had recently moved to the United States and were shocked by the amount of advertising. The Reddit user said they saw ads everywhere, all the time. “It's so ubiquitous.”
The Reddit user wrote that there were ads on the ad-free version of Disney+ and within Grubhub from third-party advertisers. “There are ads on every bus, subway, or whatever other form of transit. There are ads on Reddit masqueraded as regular posts. There are in-video ads on YouTube following the ad breaks you are forced to watch or actively skip. There are ads everywhere I look. It's exhausting and (for me personally) breeds resentment towards every advertising brand,” the user concluded.
One commenter wrote, “My pet conspiracy theory is that it's gotten so out of hand that it's actually making people hostile to the products. The quality has also taken a nosedive, when I was a kid I remember people actually speaking positively about some ads or having a favorite funny commercial but now it's all generic slop.”
The commenter further added, “The conspiracy part is that marketing firms have shifted all of their resources away from creative and into cooking up BS metrics to convince companies that their ads are effective, when in reality they are being ignored or even actively turning people off of your business.”
Another commenter questioned the user, writing, “Where are you moving from? Because I've been to a lot of countries and haven't found the constant advertising any better than the US in most places.
In fact compared to most developing countries I'd say the adds are a bit less intrusive in the US because there is well enforced regulation about where you can and can't throw up a billboard, where as in some countries companies can just put them up anywhere. Online and on tv, I've found ads to be as frequent as possible literally everywhere.”
The Daily Dot was unable to independently verify the claims made in the thread. The details above reflect the original poster's account as shared on r/AskAnAmerican. The commenters' identities have not been confirmed.
