Let’s say this business model were banned or didn’t exist. Getting people to choose to read your articles instead of the billions of other things they could be doing with their time on the internet would still be critical if you want to get them to subscribe.

I think it’s less to do with the business model of advertising but rather I think both that business model and the tendency towards inflating adjectives are both caused by there simply being too much information, entertainment etc. for us to make a reasonable decision of what to pay attention to. We’ve exceeded our own human capacities to process and choose between different streams of information.