this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2026
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Microblog Memes
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A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.
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- Your post must be a screen capture of a microblog-type post that includes the UI of the site it came from, preferably also including the avatar and username of the original poster. Including relevant comments made to the original post is encouraged.
- Your post, included comments, or your title/comment should include some kind of commentary or remark on the subject of the screen capture. Your title must include at least one word relevant to your post.
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I think it's different if you consider ads as a way to maintain the status quo.
Like, there's an ad I keep seeing on TV where 25 or 6 to 4 by Chicago plays as parents struggle to keep up with the parenting responsibilities of their toddlers. It's an ad for Amazon. And thank god for Amazon for being available to help these parents.
And like...everybody knows about Amazon. Nobody is going to suddenly sign up for a Prime account after seeing this ad. However, parents or expecting parents who already have Prime accounts are going to relate to the people in the ad and not even consider other options for their parenting needs.
Maybe a very specific example, and their are certainly ads just telling you to buy chicken nuggets, but I'm seeing it more and more.
Edit: Or hell, look at detergents. Do you really think Tide has innovated anything in the past 30 years?
Yeah like McD reminding you about their big Mac and fries. They know you know about it but they want to think about food because you might be slightly hungry and could eat. They are not ads but subliminal messages.
And you'll remember the ad when you drive by a Makkers a few days later
It's about being in your mind-space, even days later in the shop. Which works 50/50 on some people and not at all on the others. But that's good enough to bother all of humanity i guess.
Which means ads follow the same rules as so-called “pick up artists.” No wonder they annoy me so much.
Not once, even when I was a little kid, have I been convinced to want a product more because of an ad like that. People know about McDonald's, they know about Coca-Cola, they know about Hilton, they know about Disney+, the only real reason they have to advertise is to tell us about their new products that some of them have once in a while, or a deal of some kind. I can understand Dreamworks advertising a new movie for about a week, after that, the public probably knows. Same thing for Chick-Fil-A's new sandwiches and whatnot. But they never stop. They go for a month and a half, two even. Other brands, like Marriott, nothing's changed. We know that we can buy a hotel room and get free breakfast, we know, we'll pay for it if/when we need it, but we're not getting a room just for the "experience". These ads must be working, they've been dumping money into them for over a century at this point, maybe I'm just too autistic to understand how.
It's not about convincing people to buy the product. It's about keeping the brand in the public consciousness. For example, they want Coca-Cola to be synonymous with carbonated soft drinks, so that when you want to buy a soda, the first option you think of is Coke, and not Pepsi or some other brand.
It's very much this. They aren't trying to introduce you to this thing that's been an institution for longer then any of us have been alive. They're advertising to take up the limited realestate in our conscious minds.
If I were a crackpot theorist, which I am not but I dabble, I would say I wouldn't be surprised if ads serve as a medium of population control.