It just strikes me as odd when people are happy with things like UX (designing something to create a feeling in order to convince a person and to get them comfo

It just strikes me as odd when people are happy with things like UX (designing something to create a feeling in order to convince a person and to get them comfortable undertaking the action you want them to. Formulaic in the sense there's a whole industry around "best practice"), or A/B testing (covert science experiments on real people to design systems to increase the likelihood of similar humans taking the action you want. Similarly so.). And yet marketing, because it's perceived as being detached from the product (which it really isn't) is the bad actor because it's explicit and transparent about its goal. Amuses me as much as it frustrates.