29- Merchants of Cool

Based on Friedman's lecture on the Psychology of Cool (12/8/09), giving others the power to determine your coolness makes you vulnerable, because teens are influenced by the idea of being cool, the vast majority of teens are insecure. Corporate companies take advantage of this and use it as a technique to target teenagers, "Teens are like Africa" (Merchants of Cool) they colonize our consciousness. We all want to be valued so the marketing companies use that and flatter the chosen audience (teens) to get their attention.

The film, Merchants of Cool, make me believe that the corporations are evil for manipulating teens because they are vulnerable. They take advantage of teens as an easy target for their profits. Capitalists find the easiest way to make the most profit, even if that means creating these roles and norms for teenagers and influencing them to be cool highly affecting their lives. But in addition to me being manipulated by advertisements, I am being manipulated by this film (another form of media). I am simply thinking what corporate media wants me to think even though those ideas are contradictory.

I think that because media holds such a big role in our lifestyles, the average teen in 2001 sees 3000 advertisements a day, we don't know what else to rely on. The media has become our main source for things, movies, television, advertisements, and second hand media from other people. I do think that advertisements for all ages should be limited, not necessarily banned but limited. For all ages I would believe that adults can be manipulated by the media as well as teenagers, probably not as easliy, but nonetheless manipulated, my parents still buy new digital items even when we do not really need them. I beleive that if we were not so influenced by ads we would find more reliable sources to be influenced by such as actual human beings who are not trying to get you to buy something (hopefully).

I think it should be limited and not banned because ads are in a cycle of capitalism and without ads that would mean people working with the ads would be out of jobs (I'm sure not all of them are evil, some of them are probably just stuck in that job), lots of actors other companies would be out or work, increasing poverty in the U.S. It would be harder to buy the things we need (food, water, etc) because we would have to figure out where to get what we need. I don't know if the US can handle not being told what to do all the time. We are so used to being tools we don't know what it is like to not be one.