You can keep moving the goalposts of what true marketing is though.
Oh, an ad hominem! Nice. I could also work at marketing and hate marketing, doesn't change the point. And of course, I like HN despite it being a "marketing tool", not because of it. The "marketing campaign for YC" part is one of the main things I dislike about it. And the question wasn't whether marketing could ever produce something cool, but If it was that, I could add that I like some funny TV ads too.
>You can keep moving the goalposts of what true marketing is though
Really? As if differentating because some FOSS team making a cool site and promoting their project on some forums, for example, and corporate marketing, with a budget, a marketing department, ads, astroturfing, and all that, is impossible, right? "It's all marketing"
A marketeer might want to stir up "word of mouth" or build a product's reputation artificially. But I refer to good ole organic word of mouth and reputation built without marketing.
You know, just by buyers recommending it to other buyers, and the product getting recommended because the see it's good by itself. The way those things are normally understood, just like how "love" normally is understood as two persons taking a liking to one another, and not e.g. as in some guy stopping his car in a shady end of the city and paying $50 dollars in exchange for sex.