Are physical ads like the ones you describe really so burdensome? As long as it's a poster, and not a bright, distracting video ad on a giant screen (I see these at bus stops), I don't mind them. Sometimes the design of the ads are interesting, even if the product they're selling is not.

> Are physical ads like the ones you describe really so burdensome?

Yes. They are everywhere. I cannot look at a building, a road, or go to the subway without seeing a hundred advertisements. My brain will try to read automatically any text in my field of vision. It is exhausting. My job is complex enough to overload my brain with things I do not need or care about.

It's a war on human attention. And we need de-escalation.

I guess that it is different for each individual. And, your experience is not like mine. But for the ones like me it needs to stop.

Thank you. Most people underestimate the amount of energy it takes to filter these out constantly.

It’s pollution, but stinky to your mind rather than your nose. I’ve picked different routes to work just to avoid billboards and advertising.

I read words in front of me, if they're in front of me, and think about what they actually mean, from a purely grammatical perspective. With many ads, that's already bad enough. Then there's the attempted manipulation versus the reality of the product. I apply this hairsplitting to everything I see, and where the intentions of what I'm analyzing are benign, it's fun -- for me. Even when I "find mistakes", it's more a "it's fun to think about things" thing. But when the intentions are not benign, I use it to fuel my vigilance.

> To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle.

-- George Orwell

> Because we are lied to all the time, in ways so routine they are beneath conscious notice, even the most direct lies are losing their power to shock us.

-- Charles Eisenstein, "The Ubiquitous Matrix of Lies"

I never accepted or adopted said routine, when I was a kid, my mum often said "you're always thinking", and hating most ads is just a natural extension of that. I just have the one gear, and I haven't tired of it yet.

> Sometimes the design of the ads are interesting, even if the product they're selling is not.

Sometimes we can learn interesting things from a virus, I still don't want the disease. Most of what I could learn from well designed ads, I could learn from elsewhere, too, and none of it is essential, versus the essential things (like words meaning things, logical/critical thought, people behaving, talking and thinking like adults, and treating their clients as such -- and so on) most ads seek to undermine.

I spent a couple weeks in Hobart, Tasmania last year which has strict regulations on signage and outdoor advertisements. It was really refreshing, and returning to the States really made our ads stand out.

As the other guy said, when you go to an area that doesnt have so many the marketing is visually jarring and it takes a few weeks to get your marketing immunity built up