[Waterluvian]

People used to go to great efforts to show up to a World's Fair, which is basically all advertising. Same with entertainment or tech expos or keynotes or whatnot.

I think we've kind of binned advertising into this category of "objectively bad manipulation that ideally stops existing." Probably because there is just SO MUCH JUNK ADVERTISING these days. But I think there's legitimate, win-win occasions for advertising where you get to learn about new stuff and be entertained.

[smoldesu]

I would agree if everyone could just chill and present honest ads. Instead we have Google comparing their hardware against third-world manufacturers, Apple benchmarking their Macbooks against 4-year-old machines and Microsoft claiming performance improvements over Windows 8.

Nobody can tell an honest narrative anymore. It's just different flavors of hustling for different people, who think their taste in advertising is exclusive or developed.

[Waterluvian]

Advertising narratives have never been honest.

[smoldesu]

Then you'll have a hard time getting people to stop thinking they're "objectively bad manipulation".

[Krasnol]

I don't think they care as long as you watch.