Advertisers’ Targets

“Over 50 and Out of Favor” (May 10) reports on aging baby boomers aggrieved that they’re too old to be targeted by advertisers. Are they nuts? Moving beyond range of TV hucksters, pesky telemarketers and the daily onslaught of direct-mail junk sounds like one of the great perks of maturity. It seems we are so thoroughly defined by commerce that a decline in ad dollars aimed our way challenges our identity according to the contemporary Cartesian principle: I consume therefore I am.

Daniel S. Hinerfeld

Santa Monica

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What a strange story to appear in The Times. I can’t believe that anyone would actually complain about being ignored by advertisers. I’m in the “desirable” 18-to-49 demographic, and fervently wish that marketers would just leave me alone. I look forward to the day I turn 50, when the torrent of messages enticing me to buy useless junk I don’t need may abate slightly. Oh, but I forgot: We’re all members of an “ownership society,” aren’t we? How silly of me.

Alexandra Ferry

San Marino

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Being relevant to current U.S. advertising objectives is to be irrelevant to the broader realm of the breathing, thinking and living....

Carolyn Gale McGovern-Bowen

Westlake Village