"Marketing" is the art of getting people to buy things they don't need and can't afford with money they haven't earned yet.

There are marketing schemes that specialize in selling to children (check out Saturday morning TV), the aged, the sick, the uneducated, unsophisticated, the unhappy, to those of limited intelligence and any other group they can target; and they will exploit every social and cultural foible available to do so. It makes no difference to them whether the product is beneficial or useless or even lethal. In other words, everyone, no matter how vulnerable or unprepared, is fair game and open to psychological attack from these evil geniuses. When you point this out to them, they'll tell you with a perfectly straight face, "we're not holding a gun to their heads and forcing them to buy", which gives you an idea with what contempt they hold their marks.

It is the way business games the Law of Supply and Demand and makes a mockery of the free market. Maybe the system can't work without these people, but that doesn't mean I have to like them.