Parisian Posters and a Possible Revolt

Marketers ruin everything, as they say.

Early in his book The Attention Merchants, Tim Wu tells the story of one of the first kinds of attention merchants: the Parisian poster artists of the late 19th century. In short, these artists created colorful posters, often including beautiful, barely dressed women, as the first version of the “billboard.” The posters were actually very popular in Par…