r/nosurf • u/mmofrki • 2d ago

Social media is said to be used to "manipulate" people: thoughts, habits, purchases, opinions, etc. How are those who don't use it affected?

Ads are generally designed these days to get users to buy the most unnecessary, cheaply made garbage from places like Temu and AliExpress. Things that no one would really need or use but buy anyway for fear of missing out.

Influencers push this too, like labubu. "Everyone is into it, why aren't you?"

But if one doesn't scroll, browse, or watch. How would they get suckered in?

The less they engage, the more willpower they have to see advertising as just advertising and don't necessarily have that 'need' to buy the advertised product.

Are these people much safer from online manipulation?

8 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

0

u/AutoModerator 2d ago

Attention all newcomers: Welcome to /r/nosurf! We're glad you found our small corner of reddit dedicated to digital wellness. The following is a short list of resources to help you get started on your journey of developing a better relationship with the internet:

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

5

u/Aggressive-Head-9243 2d ago

I’m not affected positively by advertisements in any shape (I don’t wanna buy from youtube ads, I don’t wanna buy from tiktok shop, I don’t wanna « support small businesses ») but I’m still affected by the violence of being harassed by ads, and by seeing other people being manipulated into buying things they never needed or even truly wanted

It makes me angry when I see anyone trying to sell anything because of how it basically ruined the internet. I love money and I love buying shit, but cheap advertisement disgusts me

4

u/xtremis 2d ago

That's why I use adblockers, custom client apps and SponsorBlock as much as possible. I can't stand the modern web browsing, where more than half of the visible area of the page is occupied with ads, it's disgusting.

One consequence of that is that I'm never aware of any "trends", until youtubers start to do essays about it. The Stanley Cup, or the labubus, or whatever, never seen it before, until I started to see some videos analysing those trends.

1

u/mmofrki 2d ago

The ones that are annoying are the ads that play as videos and have no volume button and have about 3 sections: the ad, the opening of the play store, the demo.

And how they make the exit button so small that by going to tap it, you'll miss, and it makes the app store open again.