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Talk about existential crises of industry: Does Advertising Ruin Everything? questions Atlantic reporter Derek Thompson, in a rather panic-inducing Q&A with Tim Wu, an author on a new book on the history of ads. Spoiler alert: we may have fucked some shit up, fam.

Though, as Wu points out, one mega interesting point that you should be sure to hit all your ~I’m just trying to get rid of my material possessions bc they don’t spark joy~ hippie type friends with: for all our wily ways, us marketing hedonists got a lot of it from religion…

“A subtle thesis of the book is that business overtook religion in the 20th century. For most of human existence, who told you what to think? Preachers did. Religion did. But I think that, through advertising, business has displaced religion as the primary instructor of human deliverance.”

Definitely worth the read, whether you’re the advertising type or the alternative: the rely-on-the-advertising-types-for-your-paycheck type.

Like Deez Links? Forward to Don Draper.