Truth in advertising  

I'm thinking of getting broadband soon... I'm sick of waiting for this phoneline to connect all the time, and the university's connection speed isn't exactly convenient. I'll have to wait to see if I'm even going to be in town for the summer, but I'll probably go for this SBC/Yahoo! broadband unless anybody writes to put me off of it. I saw the commercial today where Yahoo! reveals to the old fella (not sure what this has to do with broadband) that he likes salsa, when even his wife didn't know he liked salsa, and I used his case as a plea (!) with my girlfriend, who doesn't need to be convinced really since I'll be paying for it. But it occurs to me that it's awfully strange to be pleading the case on the basis of a totally fictional story, one which I knew full well was fictional but which was clearly recreated via advertisment to echo a real-life testimonial. How did I know it was fictional when it didn't say so? How long have we been able to decipher this kind of code? Aesthetically, I find it absolutely thrilling that neither we nor the advertisers realy care whether the story is true or not, although I guess it's kind of shocking if you're concerned about consumers' rights and all that.