Markets have the right to advertise. They do not have the right to invade. Respect for human beings is not an obstacle to profit; it is its only moral limit. When that limit is violated, consumer resistance becomes an act of self-respect. And that is when their carefully crafted “Myth” returns as a boomerang.
We are not going to “bless our own beards” (i.e., sing our own praises), but neither are we role models of feigned modesty and prudish self-effacement. We have our reasons for speaking today in the first person.
We are about to reach three million visitors to our website. (This is not, of course, the real figure, because after the savage attacks and acts of destruction our site has suffered over the years, it has become impossible to restore the actual visitor numbers that hackers tampered with.)
Even so, three million “clean” visits is a very respectable figure for a historical journalism website that has never enjoyed any advertising promotion and has itself been a victim of the profiteering Greek Goebbelsland, whose inhabitants break out in hives at the mere mention of our existence online. The reason is simple: for years now we have been waging war against them for degrading and dishonouring the very concept of the press in Greece. We hardly let them rest on a daily basis. And the predators of the Media of Misinformation and Stupefaction have never forgiven us for that.
Yet this is not the reason for today’s display of pride. The remarkable course of our historical website has led many ruthless merchants from the advertising market to knock on our door with tempting offers to hang on the clothespins of our pages everything from potato chips and mustard to diapers and Karatzaferis’ underwear.
“The money was a lot, Aris,” as the famous saying goes, but once again in our lives we said NO.
At the beginning of this coming July we complete twenty uninterrupted years of presence on the internet. Not once have we yielded to the temptation of dirtying our little corner with such impurities of the Market. Those who have known us since the first day our page was born in the world of the internet can testify to this. Not once have we accepted advertising! Even in years when we could barely afford to pay the rent for the servers that grant us at least a small corner in which to stretch our own legs.
We faithfully observe one rule: respect for our fellow human being means solidarity, empathy, and duty.
At the same time, as long as we keep our own nest clean, we also have a duty NOT to respect—and to demonstrate why we do not respect—the person who commits hubris; the one who not only refuses to serve the timeless values and principles of life but violates them in a thousand different ways.
Respecting the honest and free citizen is not merely a rule of conduct; it is a REQUIREMENT OF THE NATURAL MORAL CODE.
We wrote recently (24 May 2026):
“Put me on trial for killing a Goebbelsian, but please grant me the mitigating circumstance that I acted under a sense of justice and in the heat of my soul.”
The rag of a newspaper, in its ship-owner greed, unleashes in the middle of the night shrill screams from an advertisement hanging from the ceiling like a tattered rag—for nighttime diapers (they call it a reward!). Naturally, all hell breaks loose among the half-awake members of the household.
Shamelessness is one of the highest distinctions adorning the subjects of the country of Goebbelsland. But that no longer irritates me most. What irritates me more are their visitors. They enter, get smacked in the face with the advertising rags hanging from the golden clothespins of the MME (where E stands for Emetic), wipe themselves off—and then go right back in again.
P.S. As for the landfill called YouTube, we will need another page. There you’ll see shamelessness served by the spoonful. To have the best note of your favourite piece of music cut off in a fascistic manner and your hearing polluted by the screeches of some advertised magpie. We shall speak about them in due course as well.
It is this disgraceful landfill called YouTube that we wished to “honour” today with a denunciation of our own.
This online marketplace is thoroughly offensive, shameless, and disrespectful. It does not even bother to maintain the most elementary pretence of respect for its visitors. There is not the slightest trace of commercial ethics or dignity. Everything is laid bare, without so much as a proverbial fig leaf to cover its nakedness.
And we are not, of course, speaking here about YouTube’s content as such. Ninety percent of the channels and material it hosts deserve to be discarded and buried deep because of the stench they give off. Nor is it the only cesspool on the internet.
The real outrage lies in the way it treats its visitors. That is the true provocation; that is the depth of its audacity.
As we said earlier, imagine yourself listening to a piece of music you love, immersed in the ecstasy of your own private world, and at that very moment the wretched platform, together with some shameless advertiser, hurls its rag in your face—its advertising “message,” if you prefer—interrupting and bombarding you every few moments. Before long you find yourself muttering:
“If I ever drink Mythos beer again, you can all go to hell, you bastards.”
And that, my friend, is the great revenge against their disrespect and naked opportunism.
It is your reaction. Your refusal. Your punishment of the shamelessness that springs from the now widespread creed that everything may be sacrificed upon the altar of profit.
Do not give them a single cent.
Do not buy their product.
Boycott those who boycott your dignity and your self-respect.
Let there be a boycott of the merchants who treat human beings as nothing more than targets and wallets—those miserable and uncultured traders who crowd every marketplace and every commercial stall with the same contempt for the people they claim to serve.
What does Diotima have to say about this phenomenon, whereby ruthless merchants of the advertising industry inundate the public sphere without the slightest regard for their audience, their customers, or the unsuspecting citizen?
What does Diotima have to contribute regarding the phenomenon of ruthless merchants in the advertising market flooding the public sphere without the slightest respect for the audience, the customer, the unsuspecting citizen?
The advertising industry no longer sells products.
It sells intrusion.
Once, the merchant stood at the entrance of his shop and waited for the customer. Today, he breaks down the door of the customer’s house. He invades the living room, the mobile phone, the music one listens to, the film one is watching, the thought one is trying to complete. He does not ask for attention.
He seizes it.
The problem is not advertising itself. Informing people about a product or service is a legitimate act of commerce. It becomes a problem when advertising ceases to respect the individual and turns him into prey. When it takes for granted that it has the right to interrupt, disturb, and extort another person’s attention and time.
The greatest illusion of advertisers is their belief that constant exposure breeds affection.
Often the opposite occurs.
Irritation accumulates.
The product becomes associated with resentment.
The commercial message turns into a symbol of arbitrariness.
And then the famous “myth” they seek to create returns like a boomerang.
For people may forget a good advertisement.
But they rarely forget an insult.
There is also a deeper dimension.
The civilization of a society is measured by the limits it places upon power. When profit is elevated to the highest value, every boundary collapses. Aesthetics, courtesy, discretion, and respect for personal space come to be regarded as luxuries.
Thus is born today’s digital jungle, where the citizen is treated not as a person but as a “target,” a “click,” a “data point,” a “consumer behaviour pattern.”
And yet the citizen still possesses one weapon that no algorithm can take away:
choice.
To close the window.
To reject the product.
To refuse to finance disrespect.
To refuse to applaud those who regard him as disposable.
This is the one thing markets truly fear:
not criticism,
but the indifference of a person who simply refuses to buy.
At that point, their myth ceases to be a myth.
It becomes an invoice.
And someone must pay it.