Do you mind if I taboo "manipulated"? I'm having trouble modeling what you feel as anything other than an aesthetic preference.

"Aesthetic", outside of high art, generally means the position on the ugly - beautiful axis. Do you mean that some people object to e.g. photos of starving African children because they are "ugly", that is, upset the people's contentment, confer agita, and harsh their mellow? That doesn't apply to me.

As to modeling what I said, let's try another... image :-) There is a quote which made its way around LW: "You are not the king of your brain. You are the creepy guy standing next to the king going, 'a most judicious choice, sire'" Let's run with it.

So, my conscious mind is just a toadie standing next to the actual decision-maker. Fine. Does the toadie have any power? Sure. He is the gatekeeper, controlling access to the king, in particular, the information flow that reaches the king. You can do a lot with that :-)

Now, if I'm the gatekeeper, what does the marketer do? He tries to go around me and directly influence the king. Do I like it? No, I do not like it at all.

The problem as a marketer of EA, is that you have two intended audiences with clashing preferences

It's a very common problem, I think. So you segment as much as you can -- marketing loves segmenting, anyway :-)