A driver in Texas recently saw something that they couldn't help sharing with the other members of the r/Dallas subreddit — and not for good reasons.
"Headed towards the tollway and saw this coming from Fort Worth - never ever seen something like this," the poster wrote. "Is it a drone ad? It was genuinely so distracting while driving but got passenger to take a video for me."
The accompanying short video shows a massive advertisement for the chain sports bar/arcade Dave & Buster's seemingly floating in midair over the highway.
The flashing, floating advertisement is yet another example — albeit a somewhat more potentially dangerous one — of how advertising has infiltrated every part of our lives.
Not only are you inevitably going to be bombarded by ads when looking at your phone, computer, or television, but you are going to see them pretty much everywhere you go.
In fact, we are subjected to so many ads that it's almost impossible to accurately perceive how many ads we're seeing. According to one study, the average person sees around 10,000 ads per day.
Some of the more ridiculous recent examples include a sink faucet with a built-in digital advertising display, ads that block out views of nature to hawk their products, an ad inside a fortune cookie that advised its opener to "PLAY POKER. WIN BITCOIN," and more.
The incessant barrage of ads goes beyond annoyance. It may also have profound implications for our collective mental well-being and the health of our planet. One study found a direct negative correlation between the amount of money spent on advertising in a country and the happiness levels of its citizens. In other words, the more ads there were, the sadder everyone was.
The constant advertising also encourages rampant overconsumption, pushing people to buy more fast fashion — which ends up in landfills — products made with plastic that poison the oceans, and more.
There is some precedent for cities creating policies that ban certain types of advertisements. In the Dutch city of Haarlem, ads for meat are banned from public places, and a 2019 rule in New York City banned alcohol ads on city property.
While we are probably not heading toward more comprehensive limits on all types of ads, it's certainly worth wondering how we can start decreasing the number of ads we are subjected to on a daily basis. That's especially true when there is a clear energy (and thus pollution) cost associated that would not be there otherwise — as is the case with drone and billboard advertising.
The other members of the subreddit were none-too-pleased about the giant highway Dave & Buster's ad.
"Yeah because that's not distracting. I'm so glad my world has become an endless stream of advertisements that there's seemingly no escape from," wrote one commenter.
"Looks intended to cause a wreck," wrote another.
"I can't wait to finally enter the dystopian era with floating advertisements everywhere you look," another chimed in.
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