[dwaltrip]

You are being a bit pedantic and misdirectional with that first quote. It's not an important thesis of the article that people already know about the products ahead of time.

In no way have you demonstrated a "completely flawed premise".

> It's been dishonest since the start

How is it a rebuttal to the say that advertising was always dishonest and manipulative...?

[ameister14]

Firstly, I don't think it's unnecessarily pedantic to say that the origins of advertising and what they are for are not what he says they are.

>How is it a rebuttal to the say that advertising was always dishonest and manipulative...?

Because if your argument is that advertising is becoming or has become dishonest and manipulative and it needs to be pulled back to what it was before, that is a lot weaker if advertising has always been dishonest and manipulative.