>I feel similarly about old advertising. Anything from, say, the 1970s and before just doesn't hit me the same way, particularly in print. Audio/visual ads somewhat, but even they seem different and more innocent.
No, the reason they seem so different and innocent is because you aren't bombarded by them. You watch an old ad on YouTube once, and you think it's cute or corny and laugh at it. Now imagine you're watching a movie, and they show you the same 1980s ad over and over again while you're watching the movie, every 15 minutes.
If you're old enough that you had to watch ads on TV because TiVo didn't exist yet, you might remember how annoying they became, and how glad people were when they got remote control TVs with mute buttons. Or maybe it's been so long you've forgotten how bad it was.
NB: it's generally poor form to presume what someone thinks or perceives. At best it may be highly inaccurate. At worst ... well, worse. Better to couch it in terms of your own experience, or third-party research where that exists.
Though yes, old-style ads are less relentless, and often have some degree of novelty. Repetition of ads where I do encounter them (largely public-broadcasting underwriting spots and on podcasts before I fast-forward through them) is in fact tedious, so you may have a point.
Another factor though is that the old-time ads are attempting to manipulate, yes, but they're trying to manipulate a target which is no longer present. Current-day ads both turn the dial to 11 and are often at least trying to specifically exploit personal information and weaknesses.
TV's been dead to me for decades, in large part for the reasons you describe. The few times I'm exposed to it just reinforces why.
I live in Tokyo, and the air is not that clean close to highways: large diesel trucks pollute a lot, and also small motorbikes/scooters pollute horribly because they don't seem to require any emissions controls at all.
The main thing keeping the air clean here is the proximity to the bay, along with the fact that there just aren't that many private cars in the first place, since most people take public transit and don't drive because there's nowhere to park.
Large trucks do not pollute a lot (there are strict standards to that matter). While they do pollute obviously, there is no viable substitute to it. EV truck is a dream at this point in history.
Amount of private cars in Tokyo is huge. Pollution near expressways in rural japan far from bays is next to nothing, so having it close to ocean does help a little.
Small motorbike/scooters are not allowed on expressways.
Most people decided that convenience was better than freedom and self-determination.
If people want the freedom to use their own fonts in their own presentation, and don't want to pay handsomely for the privilege, LibreOffice is freely downloadable. But they don't want to use that for some reason.
>But that future will not arrive everywhere at the same point in time and Norway is very far ahead of the rest of the world due to a fairly unique set of circumstances: exporting your own oil and gas to be able to have a 'clean' (and up to recently heavily subsidized) transportation network is in a way just a gigantic bookkeeping trick.
Not really. Even in a hypothetical future where all road vehicles are electric, we'll still need fossil fuels for a while. For one thing, it's probably going to be a while before airplanes can go electric. And production of plastics will probably need petroleum for a long time.
Admittedly this data is a little old (20 years), but today's numbers probably aren't that different. It shows, out of US petroleum production, that only 47% is used for gasoline. 8% is used for jet fuel, 22% for diesel and heating oil, 5% for coke, 3% for asphalt, etc. 53% is not a "rounding error".
Well, I guess one nice thing about that last part is that we'd be able to just enjoy AI "actors" as they are, instead of being conflicted because in real life, they're not cult promoters, rapists/groomers, etc. Moviemakers wouldn't have to worry that their star isn't going to suddenly be embroiled in some scandal, requiring them to hire another actor and re-shoot all their scenes quickly.
People no longer look up to America like they did 40-50 years ago. It's been a slow decline, really starting I think in the early 2000s with GWB's "war on terror" and stupid invasion of Iraq, and the election of Trump accelerated it, and the re-election of Trump has really put the final nails in the coffin. Instead of a force for good that sometimes screwed up as America was formerly viewed, it's viewed as an empire in rapid decline with a toxic culture. It's not perceived quite as badly as Russia, but it's getting there.
That's not really about media though. While it does factor into the overall sentiment, a think a lot of people can enjoy America's cultural exports regardless of how they feel about the geopolitical side of things (certainly we can).
I'm just curious because, for better or worse, American movies, music, and TV still seem globally dominant from my POV and it'd be interesting to know if and how that is changing. There's kind of a huge moat, other countries haven't built out these global powerhouse media industries.
Another layer of the moat is how much that media and tech hegemony has entrenched English as the global language. Any culture based on a different language is going to have a really hard time getting beyond their borders.
When someone says that the relevance of American media is in decline, that implies that something else is becoming more relevant. There has to be something there beyond "America sucks now."
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