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From: John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Naughty Advertising (was Re: naughty Pascal)
Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2026 08:45:29 -0800
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On Thu, 8 Jan 2026 07:01:19 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D=E2=80=99Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

> > The smart ones try to control what people want. =20
>=20
> The smart ones know that=E2=80=99s impossible. The best they can do is en=
tice
> the punters with attractive alternatives, and leave them to make the
> choice.

Oh, it's possible-ish, for a time, in the right social context; advert-
ising is essentially weaponized mass psychology at this point, and they
got *very* good at it for a while there. The interesting thing is that,
as so much of the corporate space is dominated by absolute morons with
no connection to the line of business these days, a lot of the major
players are being stupid enough that even the ad people can't sell it
to the masses. Like, that Dell laptop - on top of "AI-ready" being not
a thing *anyone* needs (to the extent that it's even a *thing* at all
and not just marketing woo-woo,) the other features mentioned are a
transparent attempt to ape that one Macbook that everyone in the world
hated, the one that was probably the reason Apple finally gave Jony Ive
the boot. Whose bright idea was *that!?*