zlacker

> Advertisement used to be fact based

This is demonstrably not true. For over 100 years, advertising has had strong roots in emotional appeal. From wiki:

"In the 1910s and 1920s, many ad men believed that human instincts could be targeted and harnessed – "sublimated" into the desire to purchase commodities"

Just look at smoking ads from this time. Claiming health benefits that didn't exist, covering up health issues they knew existed, and associating smoking with cool people and socially desirable behavior.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_advertising#Since_1...

>>93po+(OP)
One need only consider the term snake oil salesman to see advertisements root as emotional and non-fact-based. The term dates back to the late 1800, and fascinatingly, only came to refer to a fake product when White men copied a Chinese recipe which actually did reduce inflammation. The Chinese laborers would use this oil after a hard day's work, but used water snakes, which did not exist in California.

Clark Stanley, a former cowboy, copied this tincture, but claimed it came from the Hopi tribe of Native Americans and used rattlesnakes, which had barely any of the anti-inflammatory chemicals as the original Chinese recipe.

More importantly, a Federal government regulation in 1906, with the intention of cracking down on "patent medicine", discovered (in 1917) that Stanley's snake oil, had, in fact, no snake oil in it at all! For this gross violation of consumer trust, Stanley was fined $20, or about $500 in today's dollars.