Yes, yes, and yes. Advertising is almost always malicious. The days of it being primarily small businesses getting the word out about themselves are long over. Advertising firms now have actual psychologists that study ways to best exploit the brain of the common man, and that is wrong.
Hear hear. It's bizarre to see people like the parent commenter who are so unthinkingly accustomed to abusive and manipulative advertisements that they mistake its perversity for normalcy.
When I grew up in the 90s you kinda wanted ads. Otherwise you wouldn't know what was being shown at the theaters etc. People put up "No ads but Cineama ads and the phone catalogue" on their mailboxes etc. I believe many peoples perception of the world does not change from their childhood. At least very slowly.
Ads stopped being useful about 20 years ago by now and like 10 (?) years ago they started to spy on us.
