A Redditor’s day at the beach became a little less relaxing after spotting an ad flying over the water.
A photo of the banner, seen flying above Ocean City, Maryland, was shared on Reddit’s r/Anticonsumption subreddit, where readers decried advertising’s reach into seemingly all aspects of life.
Photo Credit: Reddit
“Saw someone complaining about boat ads at the beach,” the OP wrote. “May I introduce you to sky ads?”
Although the site was viewed by some commenters as “dystopian,” a number of social media posts have shown that advertising is now actually a regular occurrence at beaches.
Posts on Reddit and TikTok sparked outrage by showing a digital billboard moving across the water on a boat the size of a barge. Another Reddit post showed a similar digital billboard being towed across the water, also just off the Florida coast.
It’s not just beaches, either. Whether you’re stuck in traffic, pumping gas, or just going to school, you could now potentially be inundated with advertising.
Last year, money spent on advertising in the United States increased 5.6% over 2023 to an estimated $360 billion — and that doesn’t even include political advertising. All that comes with a high cost.
Advertising pushes an overall culture of consumerism, where people strive to get the best and latest products. Companies, in turn, create more and more products to sell.
The manufacturing and production sector is responsible for roughly 20% of global carbon pollution, and more than half of the world’s energy usage. It also contributes greatly to the trillions of pieces of plastic that pollute our planet and waterways.
Purpose Disruptors, a London-based organization dedicated to advertising, created a metric called “advertised emissions“, which measures the carbon pollution that results from increased sales due to advertising. In 2022, its research found, the United Kingdom generated nearly 230 million tons of “advertised emissions.”
Not surprisingly, consumerism isn’t favored by many r/Anticonsumption posters, and this beach billboard drew considerable ire.
“I’ve heard of carrier pigeons,” one commenter wrote, “but this is too much.”
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