The most scathing 1930s anti-advertising critics were advertising insiders themselves

Evidence

Some of the most intense new critics of advertising were internal. In 1928, Theodore MacManus, who had so famously branded Cadillac, Dodge, and Chrysler, decided he’d had it. Writing in The Atlantic, he denounced both his own industry and the whole of modern civilization: “Advertising has gone amuck,” he wrote, “in that it has mistaken the surface silliness for the sane solid substance of an averagely decent human nature.” — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 261

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Relevant to the reader’s interest in how industries that harvest attention generate their own internal critics — resonates with the historical grounding purpose.