People can choose to not consume crap they don’t need. They won’t, but they can.

Advertising is now just worthless noise to me because I generally don’t buy stuff anymore but what I need.

I can’t imagine why anyone would buy most of the crap I see advertised, but they do. Halloween was a recent example: how many tons of plastic shit for costumes was shipped from China only to be thrown away the next day? How much candy was bought? Even when I was 12 I started to see what a disgusting consumerist affair the whole thing was and it lost its appeal. And yet we have adults participating.

The ad machine exists because people let it be successful.