It seems there's no escaping ads these days, especially when running routine errands. A social media user took to Reddit to share their distaste at being inundated with ads while pumping gas.
The post included a short clip of the "surreal" video playing, and the original poster explained that this felt different from regular advertising: "I don't know why these are so much different than the digital billboards or the smartphone I use everyday, it just has me thinking."
"This drives me absolutely wild," one commenter said. "I'm already paying money to be there and then I'm forced to sit and listen to advertisements while I pump gas."
Another added, "These infuriate me."
One commenter pointed out they'd be a bit more tolerable if the increased revenue from the ads was passed onto the consumer in savings.
"Ads would be fine if they lowered the gas prices," they said. "But nooooo."
The near-universal revulsion people feel toward being inundated by advertisements raises an important point about the consumption habits of wealthy nations. Advertising drives overconsumption, which costs people money and has dire ecological consequences.
Every consumer good requires some combination of resource extraction, transport, and disposal. From 1970 to 2010, natural resource consumption increased threefold, per Ecowatch. To put it another way, if everyone adopted the United States's consumption habits, we would need five Earths to meet those needs, according to data from National Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts, shared by Earth Overshoot Day.
China and Europe also have an outsized impact on the planet. The average European's annual material consumption is 20 tons, compared to around three for the average African, Friends of the Earth reported.
The tragedy of rampant consumerism is that the nations least responsible for harmful emissions worldwide are often paying the heaviest environmental costs, as the World Meteorological Organization observed.
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Cost 💰 As one commenter pointed out, there's a rather novel solution to the problem of annoying ads at the pump.
"Can't wait to one day buy an electric vehicle and never have to go to a gas pump again," they said.
Of course, that's only one of many benefits of going electric. EVs save drivers money on refueling costs and maintenance compared to gas-guzzling cars, and battery-powered vehicles don't produce planet-warming gas pollution while out on the road.
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