This is not something I really post about, but I've been interested in it for years. Marketing and advertisement in public spaces, it started with an article in some magazine or something like 10 years ago. In it the author talked about "visual cacophony" in public spaces, a decade ago it was nothing like today, but it was enough to talk about. She talked about how many different ads you see when you drive, walk or take public transportation you're bombarded with all sorts of visual marketing. She talked about how distracting and overstimulating it is. In the article it was specified why she used a word that's normally for audio content in this context. It basically said that she couldn't really think of a better word to describe the feeling and impression she had. The article stuck with me and I think about it like once a month, mainly because it got so much worse. Yes, there's now a legislature that prohibits building billboards next to highways outside of a city (Czech legislative), but that's like the only shift in the right direction, in my opinion anyway.
Why am I talking about it? There are these LED displays newly installed in some parts of the Prague underground system. They aren't in the stations or train cars. They're inside the tunnels. Inside. The. Tunnels. First time I've seen it my jaw hit the floor. Not because it's interesting how they were able to synchronize the video to a moving train, but because that's so much energy put to something like that. They firstly pitched it as "new space for art", which anyone could easily determine was a lie, advertisement was the main plan from the start. If we ignore the passenger discomfort and my personal hatred and annoyance of constantly being sold something, what about the drivers? Even now they have problems from going from darkness to bright light in very short spans, what about these things? That can't be good. Overall I hate it, I don't think it's good for anyone, they are also way too bright (you know how some cars have these bright LED lights that blind you? It's exactly like that).
Video of what it looks like, also talking about how they pitched it and how it's going.
I could also talk about advertisements on social media and other channels for advertisements, but that's for another time.
And yes, I hate most advertisements, you could say all, I don't care.
