Word of mouth with IRL people? I'm not sure I can assume anyone on any forum is real anymore. And if they are real, I assume they are marketers pretending to be users to push a product. Maybe journalism makes a come back if you can trust they are real and not a sellout.

pretty sure top meant RL ppl IRL aka meatspace.

information coming over unqualified electronic channels is not trustworthy anymore

It is already like this in my experience.

Cold outreach is dead and word-of-mouth is the most effective marketing method

The AI spammers will hire people on minimum wage to do that too, if they aren't already.

I am convinced that any post on Reddit that espouses the virtues of some or other product is a paid advert.

There is way too much corporate worship despite the platform's users generally priding themselves on being enlightened and smarter than the rest.