And we probably can't discount the role of direct-mail marketing in this, either - my bill from my ISP will arrive in a plain envelope (before I opted into paperless statements), but every random piece of upsell spam I get from my ISP is plastered with giant red letters saying "IMPORTANT INFO ABOUT YOUR ACCOUNT - TIME SENSITIVE" and often with a fake business card for some executive inside.

Even brands themselves are getting in on the game of trying to abuse people's attention with deceptive messaging.