What do you do with the other two wishes from the genie?

If no one chooses to be the change they want to see in the world then things can only keep getting worse.

If you're making a great product and you choose to make sure you don't get traction by taking this route (assuming you're not in one of the few niches where it might be somewhat viable), you're just making sure you don't succeed and that worse products with better advertising are relatively more successful.

How would that make the world better?

Whirled Peas could be one of them

And how do you get people to view said directory if they've never heard of it?

Consider that Hacker News does not advertise, and yet somehow you are here.

Hacker News does not advertise because it is a gigantic advertisement for YCombinator. This is not some sort of scurrilous accusation, they may not be constantly banging the table about it but it's not a secret.

I understand that, but the point is a good product spreads naturally.

Hacker News does not depend on me buying products from it for it's survival. If you can't see the difference in why a company cannot depend on word of mouth, then you're just really not trying to have an honest conversation.

Plenty companies don't advertise by shoving unwanted ads in people's faces.

There are plenty of companies I haven't heard of. QED

and yet they survive somehow

Many of them don't. Consider that BMW famously didn't run ads for most of its history... but now it does.

Many doing ads don't.

Hacker News depends on a constant stream of new users to keep the site alive, just like any other discussion forum. But you're right that unlike the average company this site seems to be OK with a stable but small user base and isn't aiming for unbounded exponential growth.

My dude, Hacker News is the ad.

This forum doesn't exist to get you to comment on news stories; it exists to attract tech people to YC.

Hacker News is as much an ad as a good product producing a happy customer

I think we're converging on "loss leader."

It's the way it used to be done with paper catalogues. If you're looking for a snowmobile then you go get a snowmobile catalog from a dealer who you looked up in a phonebook. But advertisers don't want to wait for somebody to decide they want a thing, they want to brainwash otherwise content people into wanting something they didn't previously want.

And how do you establish trust to curate it?