Yes, it does. One of the more interesting things about effective marketing is getting people to think the way you want without them realizing it.
Still incorrect. A gamer that has been gaming since the 80's but had theoretically never seen a single piece of marketing regarding this would still have an association of Next Gen and increased fidelity. All gamers did. When you heard the term "Next Gen" before 2005 you ALWAYS expected a fidelity leap, because that's how it happened to work in the gaming industry. The Wii bucked that, and the WiiU did nothing to "Correct" it.
Gamers, keepers of the Word. "I have a next-generation music player here," one said, and the Gamer scoffed: "It doesn't have better graphics, so it's not really any different from my old Walkman."
Did I say gamers were the keeper of the word? When speaking in the context of console iterations, any older gamer would instantly have an expectation of the Next generation of consoles improving graphics/horsepower, because being that their hobby is in fact video games, the graphics/scale are somewhat important to the evolution of the hobby. Context matters, if I was speaking to someone about an MP3 player and they said that I would no longer associate with them because they are clearly an idiot. Which brings me to the final point again.
Yes, I know they are either invested in their Sony/MS platform loyalty to want to denigrate the Wii U with the "lol not next-gen" quippery, they're confused by marketing speak, or they honestly are ignorant of what generations mean in terms of hardware.
Saying the WiiU is not "Next Gen" has nothing to do with ANYTHING in the above sentence. At all. The people saying this know the literal meaning of Next Generation or Next Iteration. They are not confused. They are not idiots like the example you crafted above. They just think that within the context of gaming, it should be how it always was, with every new hardware iteration improving the horsepower of the system. And the WiiU did this, but they did not compensate for the Wii (nor did they want to), so in comparison to the other 8th gen consoles, Nintendo's 8th gen console has much more in common with the competitions 8 year old 7th gen offerings as far as hardware is concerned. Which many Nintendo fans take issue with because of the inherent problems with 3rd party support it creates when there is such a large gap in the power of hardware iterations that occupy the same time period. For example, if I could only have one console this gen, and I went with Ninendo because I am a fan, I would be upset that I could not enjoy games on my console that the other console owners enjoy for the sole reason of the hardware not being powerful enough, even though it is still the same generation of console.
So instead of expecting they explain that every single time, let them say the WiiU is not next gen. We all know exactly what they mean in the context of NeoGAF discussions. If you really get confused by what they mean, then it is you who has an issue of processing anything beyond its literal meaning.