Because a megacorporation hires psychologists (in the form of marketers) to gin up scenarios where class mobility is implied as a subtext in the acquisition of their goods? I mean, who doesn't want to have the fun/get the girls/get the money because they bought {insert product here}?

How is one to defend one's self against the constant onslaught of bullshit meant to part fools with their money? How is an individual supposed to have any defenses against that? When they're raised in an endless din of lying noise?

Yours is the classic _abusers take_. "If only you were a better person you could stand up for yourself"

People still have agency. It's like when you were a kid and your mother asked you - "would you jump off a cliff too?"

You'd be surprised how many people could be convinced to jump off the cliff, if billions of dollars were spent on manipulating them into jumping.

Because you are a generally honest and trusting person and so you believe them when they lie to you.

What? What does it mean for a comment on the internet to be non-zero accountability?

I took it to mean my take an implied lack of agency when evaluating advertisements in one's life and if one should act on it.

My take would be that one does indeed lack the agency to be able to evaluate ads that way. The environment itself makes it impossible. SNR is way too low to find valid signals to evaluate. The number being purely honest and informative with zero spin must be close to zero.