It's not convincing if you look at it through the lense of a one-off cartesian hypothetical. But that is not a systematic understanding of what advertising is t

It's not convincing if you look at it through the lense of a one-off cartesian hypothetical. But that is not a systematic understanding of what advertising is that makes clear the underlying interests and incentives that drive the process. It's a process that by its nature perpetually transforming in the never ending race to compete for your attention, and the "bad stuff" is a reflection of the interests and incentives essential to the nature of what advertising is.