We’re all annoyed and they call it optimization

Music critic Ted Goia wrote about "an ugly new marketing strategy" that’s driving us all nuts.

The goal now is merely to ANNOY. The big companies do it on purpose.


Big streaming platforms are the experts at this new marketing tool. They want you to pay for a premium, ad-free subscription. The more annoying the commercials, the more likely you are to pay.


You will pay just to get rid of the ad.


In this topsy-turvy world, the more painful the ad, the better it works. The digital platforms have studied this—YouTube has tested using up to ten unskippable ads on users.


That’s not marketing—it’s water-boarding. But they need to test these techniques. Their business model is built on optimizing the level of annoyance.

Call them dark patterns, bad marketing, whatever. It's a symptom of the broken attention economy that demands from us more than we are willing to give—attention, purchases, email address, loyalty. All of it, wholesale, and often, more.

That we’re annoyed is a good sign. We shouldn't accept these annoying tactics as the norm.