At what point does referencing "real" companies/other works of fiction in a book become stupid and/or autistic?

At what point does referencing "real" companies/other works of fiction in a book become stupid and/or autistic?

When the company in question isn't giving paying you for the advertisement.

Depends entirely on the work.
This actually made me think. Why hasn't some writer sought advertising money for product placement in their work? TV and film does it all the time...

Well, looking at two examples, both of which Veeky Forums are familiar with, we've got Ready Player One in which Cline literally goes into long lists of '80s and '90s movies, video games, and pleb-tier anime, and does nothing expose what a massive hack he is, while A Confederacy of Dunces has references to defunct New Orleans things to help build the setting (D.H. Holmes, Dr. Nut).

pretty immediately, unless youre writing about the absolute banality of the neoliberal historical moment like houellebecq

>Depends entirely on the work.
this

Even fake companies can get annoying.
See: Don DeLillo. Reading that dude actually makes your IQ go down

david foster wallace wrote a whole essay on this subject, you should read it senpai.

Sauce me

It isn't. I
What's with contemporary people and being afraid to reference their own time and reality? Imagine if russian and victorian novelists did the same, Jesus Christ.

>Why hasn't some writer sought advertising money for product placement in their work?

Didn't David Foster Wallace try to do this?

I remember a girl in a literary soceity I was in say she got depressed when a book said the characters were using a smart phone because they didn't belong in books for her. Absolute troglodytes

There's already been product placements in books. Lots of literary books advertise other books in publication. Lots of YA and children's books advertise products related to the book, including toys. Some have gone far to have magazine-like ads. Who knows what kind of marketing has been inserted into a book's text, probably a lot of shilling in books not worth reading.

>author uses the words "machiavellian" or "odyssey"

instant pop culture pulp

never

>This actually made me think. Why hasn't some writer sought advertising money for product placement in their work? TV and film does it all the time...
I'm guessing that movies and TV need timely advertisements, when it releases, it gets the most views, books are more slow-boil

>for her

When relativism goes main stream

really depends on what book it is:
Some books do it right: "A Scanner Darkly"
Some books do not: "Ready Player One"

>author makes reference to Bible and/or Greek mythology
>you can tell what time period the book is set in

Instant Reddit-tier Ernest Cline trash

I disagree. Omitting specifics from a work for the same of some aesthetic universality or longevity is misguided. McDonald's is ubiquitous and its replacement in a text with a nonspecific fast food restaurant is detrimental to the text's ability to engage in modernity.

There is a sense in which smart phones have dried the poetic silt of the 21st c. I'm depressed generally about expanding info tech.

Never read Don DeLillo but fake companies would only work if

a) the corporation isn't a direct parody but obviously evil
b) it's clearly used as a joke/pun
c) it is for the purpose of the plot because there's not an analogous one to what you are looking for
d) it's obviously an parody of something but enough changes that it's not the same anymore (like, say, a cleaner more upscale Walmart with a soup and a salad)
e) an editor/lawyer forced it