Your frustration with the Internet and modern business is real from every angle; It's not you that needs to fix it.

[circuitbored]

People are gaming sites and web-based apps now more than ever for profit.

Even apps that were traditionally based on increasing productivity are now susceptible to the cash-grab race as the publicly traded companies behind making them are in a scramble to codify investors each year because of the very nature of capitalism and increasing overhead costs.

It's great to say that things should all be low cost, but when faced with accepting pay cuts on their own jobs, many people would usually back off with pitch forks and tiki torches, because that's the usual compromise that is presented when an angry mob complains about "price gouging" and/or "corporate greed".

The Internet created a bold new era for marketing, many people found early on that instead of ponying up a huge bag of cash for TV and radio ads to reach new audiences, they could simply start a web site, and watch people roll in the door if it was done well. Companies introduced friendly search engines, that catalogued everyone based on the merits of their products and services in somewhat of a fair manner, and promoting business was working really well for several years. Then in came SEO, which allowed a system of using keywords to rank above competitors. Suddenly, business for a company with a very valid product that people actually wanted became a case of you're not selling anything, because no one even knows your company exists online. Companies kicked into full gear to keep up with the new promotional hurdles, the larger the company (more employees, funding, and market dominance), the more likely market dominance was assured throughout the past few years. We've seen waves of companies and small businesses collapsing because they simply couldn't navigate the new marketing model with the overhead requirements it requires (Marketing teams, human psychology experts, and endless hours spent online instead of focusing on their products and services) .

We all know the old story about a Can of Coca~Cola really only costing about 50% of it's actual shelf price to make where the rest of the cost pays marketing expenses, but in reality now that marketing percentage is taking over so much that manufacturers are actually resorting to reducing product quality to compensate for even larger marketing expenses. We're living in a world now, where marketing is driving the quality of goods and services into the ground, and that's a huge problem for us all, because we're all consumers whether we like it or not. I have chosen to run all of my sites without embedded and 3rd party advertising for this exact reason. There are ways to fund useful sites and applications without letting adds clutter and hinder the user experience.

We're increasingly facing disappointment with a non-stop deluge of advertising on the Internet, on television, on the radio, in schools, and even on public transportation. Now that there are few reliable choices for dodging advertisements, the only place to seek refuge are public parks, which are the last threshold to conquer for the corporate world, and even that is changing with corporate sponsored donations and even cars parked conveniently in places that are wrapped with corporate logos and bumper stickers. We are living in a world where even teenagers trying to build their Instagram profiles are constantly marketing and promoting themselves in order to build a brand. I think we're all too busy caught up in our own process of earning a living and working to notice, but if you really take time to recall the easier years of our lives in the 80s, where no more than 3 commercials played during each commercial break of the Super Bowl, and when you didn't need to wait and watch a 5 second ad before playing a game on your Nintendo console.

All of this advertising we're subject to on a daily basis has deep psychological effects on the entire world. It also affects how businesses operate, and can potentially degrade the quality of not only goods and services through costing us all more, it threatens our individual privacy. A huge and festering issue in the world of covert marketing is the practice of building targeted information on people like you and I. Through sites like Facebook (especially on sites and apps that ask you for your government-registered name) individual user profiles are created that can often track you across all of the internet, and even through non-traditional methods like facial recognition when you are shopping in a store, or through GPS when you travel to places anywhere you go to in the world, or even by listening to and transcribing conversations covertly gathered via the mobile phone that you own. This data is valuable to corporations because it lets them know what triggers you into spending money that they can receive. It's a very dark trade that most people still aren't aware of, and the information gathering practices may even be more advanced than those that Official Governments use on criminal suspects and hostile enemies. This data can be used in ways other than just for marketing, especially when there is a data compromise or breach, which frequently occurs in or modern world, and this data can persist indefinitely into the future... I wrote more on that issue here: viewtopic.php?t=204

I constantly fight a battle with my opinions on whether corporations overall in our current world, especially the largest ones, are truly able to support ethical and responsible operations in a shareholder profit driven economy. Based on the never ending stories of weak class-action lawsuit settlements, never-ending consumer frustrations, corruption of public officials, and in my own frustration in trying to run three small businesses myself ethically, It's hard to say that business can be run ethically in this current market. It doesn't mean though that one should give into the urges to contribute to negative and manipulative behavior, that means that we all need to encourage a proper reset for positive change in our world, and expect lawmakers and corporations to address and rein in the business industry's current trend in unethical conduct.

If we do nothing, and simply ignore all of these warnings, you well may only have yourself to blame when you're required to watch a 5 minute social media influencer promo ad before being able to start your very cold car by next winter.