This is a great link, as any Frontline link would be (although I’m surprised you in particular would cite them, given their, ahem, associations…).
I’m not sure how showing that efforts to surveil the habits and moods of teenagers, a group with notoriously fickle group with un-formed frontal corticees directly supports your arguments. I admit to only reading the linked summary, but the summary argues that it’s difficult to pinpoint where specific moods and ideas begin, with marketing materials or with the teens themselves, so like you said, nothings coming from whole cloth.
But further, I don’t see why you would think that any of these marketers would be interesting in disassembling “your” culture in particular (we still don’t have the whitepaper on what that is exactly, but we know it’s roughly the opposite of the charter of the high council of Frankfurt…) All they’re selling is consumerism. If you’re arguing that in general, since teens are the targets and thus the shapers of this marketing, that it would tend to be “progressive” in the broadest sense of “doing the opposite of whatever your parent’s like,” that’s a pretty weak-sauce argument that there is a liberal conspiracy afoot here.
The summary also doesn’t point to an organized conspiracy. They point to individual companies pushing a narrative through their advertisers, but no suggestion that all advertisers are colluding to brainwash teens into a similar philosophical path. MTV doesn’t have a lock on all of teens ideas, even their ideas about what to buy. And if this ability existed, why wouldn’t this power be just as available to culture “preservers” such as yourself. In fact, your moniker suggests that your comments will be contrarian, a stance that fits into the marketing loop of “selling dissatisfaction” just as well as rebellious progressivism…
ETA: and apparently, not all marketers are selling dissatisfaction and anger… unless you consider this ad to be dissatisfact with the current state of anger…oh the levels!
