Pet Peeves - Bad Ads
Mar. 30th, 2026 12:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ene_thingMy sister can read in front of the tv, paying attention to whichever she finds more intersting, and so ignoring ads. I usually work on crafts and listen to the tv, unfortunately including the advertizing. Those have become increasingly annoying.
If food, ie nutrition, can help my health, I will always take that option over medicine. I dont consider so-called nutritional supplements either one. Being unregulated, they often contain none of the portions of their source material (say garlic or beet) that have the real nutritional value. Plus, you can tell their costs are unjustified from the plethora of ads and the fact that they are paying more than the average consumer in order to take the source away from consumers. We have to ad sources of gelatin to our diet because butchers can get more for the bones from other buyers. Sardine oil would be a great source of omega 3 and other healthy features but it isnt in our sardines because health supplement manufactures pay more than consumers. Beets are harder to get unless you grow them yourself, and mushroom prices are up because people will pay crazy high prices for nutritional supplements rather than eating right, but who knows if nutritional supplements have any value at all? Certainly never as much as the real thing.
Some ads are edifying in their way. You know the insurance companies make a fortune off of people who get Part C medicare, because the ads are so prolific on that part even outside the open season for medicare changes. (Doesnt that mean they arent worth paying for, in most cases?) You know the ongoing education of practicing doctors must be lax or problematical, else why advertise prescription medicines to the potential patients instead of perscribers?
My pet peeve, though, is how thoroughly advertisement writers have been taught to use poor English and other techniques to obscure the truth rather than persuade shoppers through truths (however misleading and one sided).For instance multiplication. Multiplying increases the original value if the multiplier is greater than one, so how can anything be 10 times less? It can be 10 percent less, it can be a tenth of the original. Ten times less means absolutely noth unless to mean its not actually less at all. As to bad grammer, why would I think anyone who cant speak even simple English (unaccented) phrases with adequate grammer? Should I really think they know better than me? Than you?
If food, ie nutrition, can help my health, I will always take that option over medicine. I dont consider so-called nutritional supplements either one. Being unregulated, they often contain none of the portions of their source material (say garlic or beet) that have the real nutritional value. Plus, you can tell their costs are unjustified from the plethora of ads and the fact that they are paying more than the average consumer in order to take the source away from consumers. We have to ad sources of gelatin to our diet because butchers can get more for the bones from other buyers. Sardine oil would be a great source of omega 3 and other healthy features but it isnt in our sardines because health supplement manufactures pay more than consumers. Beets are harder to get unless you grow them yourself, and mushroom prices are up because people will pay crazy high prices for nutritional supplements rather than eating right, but who knows if nutritional supplements have any value at all? Certainly never as much as the real thing.
Some ads are edifying in their way. You know the insurance companies make a fortune off of people who get Part C medicare, because the ads are so prolific on that part even outside the open season for medicare changes. (Doesnt that mean they arent worth paying for, in most cases?) You know the ongoing education of practicing doctors must be lax or problematical, else why advertise prescription medicines to the potential patients instead of perscribers?
My pet peeve, though, is how thoroughly advertisement writers have been taught to use poor English and other techniques to obscure the truth rather than persuade shoppers through truths (however misleading and one sided).For instance multiplication. Multiplying increases the original value if the multiplier is greater than one, so how can anything be 10 times less? It can be 10 percent less, it can be a tenth of the original. Ten times less means absolutely noth unless to mean its not actually less at all. As to bad grammer, why would I think anyone who cant speak even simple English (unaccented) phrases with adequate grammer? Should I really think they know better than me? Than you?
