I guess to me that cycle of businesses feeding into mass media feeding into the population feedback back into businesses as all contained within the culture. Mass media exerts control on popular culture, but it is itself part of popular culture. Where are the people with the money who are paying to have cultural attitudes changed to benefit themselves getting their ideas? There is a tendency to separate them from the system, but that’s just another way of assuming that people with a lot of money are somehow better than other people.
They have this idea or that, and they think they are clever, but obviously if the culture props up fabulously wealthy people and allows them to have outsized influence, then it’s just a culture that isn’t stopping the tendency of power to beget power. They didn’t do anything other than exist at the right time in the right place to be that person. Mass Media sometimes feels like it is in the lead, but it is just as often following behind - as much work is put into guessing what people want to hear as is reporting things.
We all try to pick a name for our kids that not too many other people will pick but then the grade one class is full of Austins and McKenzies. When I named my daughter everyone I told said, “Oh, that’s a great name, you never hear that these days.” But there are tons of kids with that name around the same age as her.
I think the example of being a kid is a little different, though. Adults genuinely don’t understand kids. For adults making culture for other adults, they’re all part of the same culture that is making the culture (and you can break it down into subcultures and parallel cultures, but the producers and consumers and essentially linked).
ETA: Just read @HMSGoose’s comment on this in the other thread and I think he does a better job than I do.
