Your bitterness has blinded you to the fact that your [1] was the whole point. And it’s why we’re still talking about the ad right now, and not any other ads.
Nobody is talking about the ad organically. The CEO wrote a Twitter thread, so a handful of HN users are talking about it for the next few hours, then nobody will be talking about it again. It was a total gimmick that very few people even remember.
And your smugness has blinded you to the fact that they've defeated the "whole point" if the QR code doesn't go anywhere. People aren't talking about it outside of geek circles, and even here, dang had to intervene to clarify WTF Armstrong's talking about:
