Permanently Deleted
I’ve been having a personal crisis with this for some time now. I’m 28 and I’ve been working as an account executive across a few advertising agencies since 2014 after I graduated college with a degree in journalism and specialization in advertising. I felt a career in writing was something I could excel at, and advertising was a structured way to make money doing it, something drilled into me as “the most important outcome” of college over and over. I’ve since gained class consciousness and become a Marxist and I want to spend my working life enriching the lives of others, protecting the environment, actually using skills to create something interesting, and not contribute to the everyday alienation and exploitation of modern life. I hate myself for doing what I do every day, but almost every other job that isn’t a hard science job or some skill-specific job would still just be a parasitic capitalist job it feels like.
For the last like year and a half (even before Covid happened), I’ve been applying to jobs in the public sector, environmental groups, non-profits, and others with absolutely no luck. Not even an interview. While there’s a ton of critical thinking, problem solving, managing under a ton of stress, etc, writing, strategy, creativity that goes into my job every day, as well as having designed Wix websites and done some UX work, even learned some Python programming and the violin, I have a lot of work experience that seems like it only translates to other advertising agencies. I don’t have hard skills to a degree that anyone would hire me for, and having just gotten married and with a lot of expenses, I can’t support myself and my partner on a minimum wage in my area. I don’t think any company would even take me as an intern. I want to do good but idk how to support us financially doing that, especially when I can’t even get an interview after a year and a half of trying. Idk, if anyone has any advice I’d love to hear it. It’s fucking depressing. I’m so tired of trying to develop side skills and side hustles just to try and transition into god knows what other kind of industry when all those jobs already have tons of candidates with the exact skills those companies are looking for. It also feels like shit bitching about a job where I’m making okay money right now, I know I’m really fortunate for that. Idk what to do
I work for a really big company in Canada as a part of their buying team and we handle their marketing funds for my specific department. Fucking disgusting how much money vendors spend advertising their product for a weekend in a specific spot. Try $25,000 for a one-time Facebook ad. $50,000 for an email spot and $150,000 for an end cap in the store for 10 days. I often think about how much money is wasted for such bullshit reasons, when in reality all that money could be used to help people. Fucking ridiculous.
Pretty sad isn’t it? From my experience, often times manufacturers don’t even donate their food, because they’re worried about liability issues. I’ve seen carts full of produce/baked goods get thrown away because of the company not being proactive enough to guarantee that it gets donated somewhere.
I dunno how you eliminate it, but advertising is an absolute cancer on society.
Advertising helps the big grow bigger for no reason other than having more resources to throw at it
Advertising encourages people to not look into whether a product is shit or not
I wonder how many people signed up for NordPVN because their favourite ~content creator~ told them they were wonderful?
Advertising gave us Brexit
Advertising will push people in California to pass Prop 22
My question is how do people get others to look at the things they create? If I make a game, I want other people to play it. But if I want that, people have to know about it. The only way to do so is to “advertise” in some sense, even if it isn’t paid.
There’s a massive difference between A) force-feeding information on people who didn’t ask for it, making it compulsory if they want access to other information they do want, and B) releasing information on a hub where people go who might be seeking out the kind of info you’re providing. In other words, context matters - there are places where you could talk about your game, and spread information about its existence where people are intentionally opting in to find out about new games.
But yeah, don’t fucking barge into people’s lives who may or may not give a shit about your game, just so you can get some exposure. And don’t require that people look at information about your game just so they can see or do something else that they actually want. Easy.
Edit: I just realized that those last couple sentences sounded pretty angry and hostile at you. I was trying to use your game scenario as a general example and got overly emphatic. Apologies.
Standardized item lists. So you’d simply have specs and tryout samples for tech, synopsis and trailers for content, etc. Think of it as a tag-able and searchable online catalogue. Ads don’t really expose you to the things you already crave, instead they shove products you weren’t even thinking about in your face in the hopes that you break down and start consuming without any real need for it.
