One of the largest challenges in recognizing and understanding satire is that you need a really good understanding of the context that it came from. Try reading Guliver’s Travels without any annotations, or try to watch the original Scary Movie without a good memory of popular movies made from 1995 to 2000.

I do think it’s funny to see old things like this, showing the sense of humour about it of the time. It’s really easy when you learn history to feel disconnected from the people that you’re learning about, you kind of treat them like cardboard cut outs of a person and don’t think of them necessarily having the same day to day emotions and experiences as you. I find this especially true when you go further and further back, and you’re studying people who have starkly different ways of dressing, mannerisms, and behaviors, sometimes you have to remind yourself that they were still people and could have shared some of the same angst, lust, or what have you of people today.

As far as advertising, I credit a lot of my early knowledge of advertising scams and schemes from reading my dads old Mad Magazines from the 70s. A lot of them had comics mocking the prevalent advertising tricks of the time, most of which are still prevalent today, so I learned early to look for them and then also found them humorous when I could spot them. It was like being in on the jokes of adults, as Mad Magazines in my mind were real adult fodder (as they belonged to my dad).