Advertising avoidance, once learned, is virtually irreversible.

Evidence

The problem for the attention merchants is that once people get used to avoiding advertisements, it’s hard to accept the terms of the old arrangement. The scales fall from one’s eyes, and sitting there staring at product pitches doesn’t make sense any longer. As Michael Wolff put it, “If people can avoid advertising, they do. And further: as soon as they do figure out how to circumvent advertising, they don’t go back to it.” — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1127

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to attention-industry histories like the rise of adblocking and cord-cutting dynamics in other media eras described in earlier chapters of this book.