Comment by _Algernon_
2 months ago
You might want to read up on Edward Bernays[1] if you think modern advertising is "just telling you about a product". It most decidedly is not. It is a century of of human effort poured into exploiting human evolutionary biases in order to increase sales. It's an exercise in inducing demand, not in fulfilling preexisting demand.
>What the advertiser needs to know is not what is right about the product but what is wrong about the buyer. And so the balance of business expenditures shifts from product research to market research, which means orienting business away from making products of value and toward making consumers feel valuable. The business of business becomes pseudo-therapy; the consumer, a patient reassured by psychodramas.[2]
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
[2]: Technopoly by Neil Postman
Jeez that is positively evil