Working in advertising was argued to degrade the worker’s own humanity through constant deception

Evidence

James Rorty, another former copywriter, who wrote Our Master’s Voice: Advertising (1934), in which he described the job’s effect on the soul. The adman, he wrote, “inevitably empties himself of human qualities. His daily traffic in half-truths and outright deceptions is subtly and cumulatively degrading. No man can give his days to barbarous frivolity and live. And ad-men don’t live. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 263

Categorization

• SEED: A possible essay angle: the moral cost of attention-harvesting work itself, framing advertising as corrosive labor — connecting to modern platform content moderators.
• XREF: connects to: Justified deception removes any motivation for ethical self-reform — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1437; A former adman portrayed advertising workers as emptied automata drained of life; The people-kill-people slogan functions as a moral-evasion device to deflect industry accountability — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1138 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• A former adman portrayed advertising workers as emptied automata drained of life #corroborates (0.85)
• Self-branding shifts economic risk onto workers while demanding constant unpaid labor #corroborates (0.80) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 524
• The people-kill-people slogan functions as a moral-evasion device to deflect industry accountability #exemplifies (0.78) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1138
• Industrial society reduces individuals to interchangeable species beings through conformist working conditions #corroborates (0.75)
• Justified deception removes any motivation for ethical self-reform #qualifies (0.72) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1437