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>Manipulate, how?

Myriads of ways. For an example, consider a virtue signalling issue, greenwashing. Greenwashing is employing green marketing, without actually committing to green causes. By doing this, many choose the product, company or service to be more conscious of nature. But in the end, the promises are not kept, and the customer is already out of their money. So, manipulation for pay happened.

>No one purchases anything to become addicted.

Of course they don't, that's not what I meant, obviously. They get addicted in the meantime of consuming. I think a timely example is mobile games, as detailed in for example this article: https://www.nbcnews.com/better/lifestyle/why-mobile-games-ar...

>Then once purchased they'll find it was a waste.

Yes, but they are already out of money, and the recourse is not worth it, unavailable, or otherwise hindered. The result is that many don't return the product or react in any way - and that's how this business model works.

>So it's useful to gain access to something else?

If it needs to be made useful, it's not useful. It's like console exclusive games. It's not a natural thing, the software could probably be made to run in other environments easily, but they are artificially restricted, and they spin that as an advantage to the console. It's nonsense.

>No normal person willingly spends money that they know is a waste ahead of time.

Let's not muddy the argument with "normal person". First of all, these tactics are exactly targeted at the so-called normal people. Second, there's is nothing abnormal in belonging to any group of people that get taken advantage of, like young men getting roped into redpill, incel, PUA things. The dismissal of labeling these experiences as abnormal is part of what creates even more of this thing.




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