After enjoying a meal at a restaurant, one diner eagerly broke open their fortune cookie to finish the meal. But what they saw inside horrified them.
The tiny slip of paper was a glossy black, branded with the Verizon logo.
"There's something free inside," it read, with an accompanying QR code. The diner posted a photo of the offending "fortune" on Reddit.
"They're putting ads in fortune cookies now," they wrote. "This is getting absolutely insane."
"I actually hate this," one commenter said angrily. "Can't even enjoy a cookie at a restaurant without being advertised to."
Other commenters were equally incensed.
"What f****** h*** nightmare do we live in where there is advertisements in my food?" one person asked.
The OP explained how they felt they had seen even more advertisements than usual lately.
"I practically screamed," they vented.
From LED billboards on semi trucks to a floating billboard at the beach and even an advertisement plastered on the side of a school bus, it seems no area is truly safe from the reach of advertising.
"They'd inject ads in our dreams if they could," one person said.
And not only is this distracting and irritating — particularly when interrupting moments like opening a fortune cookie — but it actually also impacts our happiness. Harvard Business Review shared a study from the University of Warwick, which found that higher rates of advertising in a country were correlated with decreased satisfaction among its citizens.
It also contributes to a culture of overconsumption, sending a message that people constantly need to purchase newly made products. But with industries like fast fashion and plastic consumer goods piling the Earth with polluting garbage — a trend which, despite environmental awareness, is continuing to grow, per the UNEP — this is precisely the opposite of what our society should be doing for a safer, cleaner future.
Because of this, some places are starting to fight back. Edinburgh recently banned certain advertisements that promote dirty energy sources; other organizations, like AdFree Cities, have been lobbying for years to regulate and minimize the presence of ads in our societies.
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