This article displays a complete misunderstanding of advertising and an intellectual arrogance that I've come to expect from AdBusters. They are disgusted by the "proletariat" and his need to buy the latest bauble even while claiming to be fighting for him. Maybe, just maybe, the average consumer knows what he wants better than a bunch of pseudo-intellectual hipsters.
Seriously, read both those articles and compare with this if you think I'm trolling.
Anti-consumerists dancing on capitalists' graves are getting jiggy too soon. Eyeballs still equals sales, there just isn't quite as much money swirling around the system right now.
This article is not either of the things you suggested. It's not jargon and babble, and the argument is pretty clear: cinsumerist society is on the brink of collapse.
The problem is that AdBusters has been saying this over and over in every single issue since I first read it, years ago. They must be pretty happy with the recession, since it somewhat legitimatizes their predictions, for now. Once the economy recovers, though, I'm sure they'll still keep beating the same drum.
AdBusters is kind of like a magazine version of "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", published in 1776. At the time, the Britsh were very concerned by the state of their own empire, and gobbled up this bleak and pessemistic (and highly misleading) version of history.
There's always going to be someone with an apetite for this sort of thing, so that keeps AdBusters in business.
Now regardless of the lack of meaningful content, I would like to urge writers to learn how to write a proper introduction and conclusion on long articles, which together summarize its contents. See it as a service to your reader.
