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You are conditioned from a young age by the ad industry to want a lot of things that are not essential in your life.

That's one theory. Another theory is that the ad industry is exploiting a human nature that has been there long before ads or industry.

How would we test that theory? How would we test if humans have always wanted things or if nobody wanted things until ads were invented?

I wouldn’t be so dismissive of the public relations industry. Sigmund Freud’s newphew Edward Bernaise is regarded as the creator of public relations, and he wrote multiple books and talked widely about his theories for manipulating the public. These theories have been put to the test multiple times and they proved successful enough that the industry is thriving 100 years later.

https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/02/27/torches-of-...

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