> I cannot understand just how consumer brained everyone is.

I can - its a collection of hundreds of PHD-level human behavior psychologists across many companies finding ways to "hack" behavior to increase revenue, vs 1 exhausted customer who just needs something basic and doesn't have the time, money or experience to be discerning in what they buy. Ad companies know more about customers and their behavior than the people are aware of themselves. They hoover up your data, run an alg to determine the patterns of your life and the lives of everyone like you, and target both online and in person various inflection points to drive you towards behavior they want.

You have both product, marketing, and sales all contributing to a mass manipulation, and for this they are rewarded with extra resources to start new companies to do more manipulation.