Whats painfully obvious is how people and profit and interchanged so seemlessly by the vultures who pray on the "ordinary people" and how desensitised we have become as a collective to the notion.
What HN shows is that a non-trivial amount of peoples entire life is focused on exploiting others inadequacies and this exploitation is portrayed as "normal" by those who profit and abormal by those who now see how invasive ad companies become.
Letting your child sit through an ad is akin to child abuse in my head. Like taking them to a church.
Most of the user base are "sheeple" who subscribe to whichever corporate marketing program has the largest budget. Google itself is a major player in this game.
"You laugh because I'm different.
I laugh because you're *normal."
*normal - Average, ordinary, unremarkable, the same
Using "sheeple" unironically says more about you than it does about them. There's nothing remarkable about being too socially stunted to be able to acknowledge groups beyond your own.
I fully acknowledged groups beyond my own --- and the fact that corporations acknowledge and abuse these groups vulnerability to social pressure.
After all, this is what advertising (i.e. Google) is all about --- coercing people to act a certain way and buy certain things in order to fit into a particular social stereotype.
Which is worse --- being socially stunted or socially vulnerable?