Nothing Feels Authentic Anymore Because Everything is an Ad

On ad fatigue

I have 26,916 unread emails, mostly marketing. I don’t even go on Instagram anymore because it’s just sponsored posts. I tried to watch a YouTube video the other day and I had to watch 3 ads every 5 minutes. I found out that a lot of run clubs are sponsored, if not started, by sports brands. Pinterest is just one big old ad now. Black Friday somehow lasts for a month and nothing is actually on sale? Every time I open the comment section of a viral video a major corporation pretending to be a gen z intern awaits me.

Still from Out 1 (1971)

I have an ever increasing feeling that something is off. I find myself feeling skeptical, cynical. Weary of whatever I encounter. Feeling like nothing is authentic or genuine.

Because someone is always trying to sell me something. Around every corner an ad lurks. Waiting to capitalize off my attention. Capitalize off any genuine moment in real life or online. I think I have ad fatigue.

What grates on me the most is that the boundaries between human and brand have been so blurred, that the world no longer knows where one ends and the other begins. Brands act like people online. People act like brands online. Influencers are people but also living, breathing ads. Celebrities are influencers but also brands too. And now regular people want to be influencers, so they give recommendations for free in hopes that one day they’ll get to do real ads. It’s a mess. And at the end of the day, it means that everything everywhere is somehow, in some way, an ad.

The internet is like the Wild West for marketing. A new frontier of endless space for sale. In the physical world there is a limit to how many billboards or bus stations you can exploit. But online the possibilities are endless. They can squeeze them into anything and everything. Hide them around every corner.

Our data is being bought and sold to hell and back, used as a means to drill us with marketing. Sometimes it feels like we unknowingly signed a deal with the devil to use these things for free and be pelted with ads for the rest of our lives. But on top of the ads, now these things also have a subscription fee too.

Everyone and everything is for sale. The unspoken goal online seems to be to reach the holy land of monetization. Anything that enjoys viral success or began as a thing people genuinely loved, eventually will start trying to sell you something. At some point they all become a vehicle for brands to sponsor or celebrities to promote things.

And the platforms that we once authentically enjoyed, have all lost the plot for the sake of spon con. Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, Tik Tok, they all seem like they have more ads than actual content now. They took our goodwill and sold it.

I understand there needs to be ads to pay for things, but when it interferes with the actual purpose of the thing, when it becomes so egregious, it reaches a tipping point. I think we’ve far surpassed that tipping point.

The end result is that it’s infiltrated our lives in every way, seeped into every crack of our culture. Musicians feel like marketing projects. Respected actors are doing Candy Crush ads and starting liquor brands. Movies and tv shows have become excuses for product placement and IP. It’s made everything feel like there is an ulterior motive, because there is.

Still from The Truman Show(1998)

But the irony is, I don’t remember the last time an ad worked on me. If anything, when I notice that a brand emails me too much or appears too often on social media, I actually begin to resent them. I have personal beefs with a quite a few companies at this point.

I buy most things second hand because I don’t trust most of the marketing that is pushed down my throat. Most new stuff today is crap because these companies blew their budgets on marketing and forgot to make something actually good. I find myself most attracted to companies that don’t seem to have a clue about viral-ity, that don’t have any social media presence.

So maybe if everything is an ad, nothing is an ad? Because I’ve become so overwhelmed by the constant stream of people trying to make money off me that it has made me kind of numb to it all. And so I try to ignore it all.