Frankly we're pretty manipulable by communications is the thing.

Which makes sense - the goal of communications is to change behavior. "There's a tiger over there!" Is meant to get someone to change their intended actions.

Lock anyone in a room with this thing (which people do to themselves quite effectively) and I think think this could happen to anyone.

There's a reason I aggressively filter ads and have various scripts killing parts of the web for me - infohazards are quite real and we're drowning in them.