How to Battle Advertisements

Ads make you want things.  When you see a lot of them, you may feel like getting those things will make your life better.  Consumer Reports says that the average American is exposed to 247 commercial messages a day.


See fewer ads, buy less useless crap.  Below is a brief list of strategies to defend yourself against the dark arts of advertising and marketing.


Ads on the internet:

• Use an adblocking plugin for your browser, such as Adblock for Firefox.  Sure, some ads sneak by the filter, but many are blocked.  Ad space will just show up as empty space.

Ads on the radio:

• Difficult to avoid.  Turn down the volume for a random period of time.
  

Ads on TV:

• Do not own a television, and definitely don't turn it on to "see what's on."  Commercials are on.
• Download torrents of your frequently watched TV shows instead of streaming them.  Vuze is a pretty user-friendly bittorrent client.
• If you do watch shows on TV or on hulu or something, mute the commercials.

Ads in magazines:

• You read magazines? On purpose?  Come on, people.  Internet.

Ads on apparel:

• If you don't buy clothing/bags/shoes/umbrellas with logos on them, you will spare yourself and the people around you from staring at ads.  Potential quandary: a free t shirt with a big logo on it.  Your options: forgo the t shirt (you seriously don't have enough t shirts?); spray paint something else over the logo; wear it to sleep.  We're not talking Run for Fun '97 t shirts, which are a great way to show other people your track record of fun, we're talking gratuitous corporate logoage.
• Express your distaste when other people flagrantly display logos.  Be rude about it; attack their self esteem.

Ads on billboards/bus stops/in the metro/on the bus:

• Yeah, these are tough.  Bring a book?  But not if you're driving.  Audiobook?  Distract the mind?  
• If an ad on the metro is made of paper, you can easily remove it and turn it over to the blank side.
• For billboards, I suggest utilizing paint cannons, brought to you by hipster science.  Or this quirky government-funded anti-billboard mere miles from where I live.

Ads on those fly-by-the-beach airplanes:

• Shoot 'em down.  Shoot 'em right on down.

Ads that are sneaky (product placement in tv shows, movies, that new Gap logo "hoopla"):

• For example, Vin Diesel drinking a Sobe in xXx.  Or hark - perhaps he is on the DIESEL industry payroll?  
• Check out this heartwarming article from, um, productplacement.biz, about the number of product placements on American Idol (4,349 placements during Season 6).
• How to defend against these when, by nature, they sneak up on you?  Avoid mainstream movies and tv shows that attract big advertisers, I guess.  I wanted to say, make sure you notice when there IS a product placement and not just let it slip subconsciously by, but then I'm telling you to pay special attention to an ad?  Web of lies.

These are some basic tactics.  Arm yourselves!