One of the nice touches in "Gravy Planet" (1952) are the throwaway sentences that show, via revealed preferences, how the ad-exec protagonist is also a product of the system he helped create.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24576623

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Manipulation of the audience in pre-TV days, ca. fourth century BC:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:19...

> "The emotions are all those affections which cause men to change their opinion in regard to their judgements"

Remember the Maine!