HW 29

I don't believe for one second that people act like themselves. If you compare how teenagers act with their friends to how they act with their family, you will see two completely different people. Merchant Of Cool states that we see over 10,000 advertisement by the time we reach the age of 18. With so much influence around, we become the reflections of mirrors. The mirrors being that the media show us whats cool and we respond to it by acting it out. Its like we are the actors and actresses of a play whereas the media wrote the script for us. If the media shows us what is cool, we quickly try to become it so we would fit in with the thousands of other people who are reacting just as quickly as us. I also believe we all want a part in this play, we all want to be recognized by what we do from certain people such as our parents and friends and people we envy. But I don't believe there is anything wrong with this because everyone is looking to be something and we'll get answers from anywhere. Seriously, we'll take any answers that will guide us to be what we want to be, well known. Some people get answers from money, books, television, friends, and religion. All these methods have become ways to become well known and everyone is doing it.
According to the Merchants of Cool, all they do is feed the cool stuff back to the teenagers. Its like in Fight Club where they make expensive soap out of the fats of people and sell it back to them. These products, because they are suppose to be cool, will ensure all eyes on you. And because of this, anyone who is insecure about themselves will copy these traits and hope they get good attention, and quickly abandon their old self. The Merchants of Cool also knows that cool wares off as soon as people discover them, so they quickly try to find the next cool thing before it is even cool to the teens. Since everyone is looking for attention, and teens spend a lot of easy money, marketers know to invest on popular teen products.
I don't think there is a way to completely ban advertisement from teenagers because advertisement comes from all shapes and sizes. For instance, your friends can advertise their shoes to you and you won't even notice it. Or you read that your favorite idol does a certain thing, and suddenly you like it. There is no proper way to completely isolate ads from teenagers unless you put them in one of those white pillow rooms in those insane asylums. Otherwise teens will be exploited to thousands of ads to come.
Yes, i do believe that Rage Against the Machine, Mos Def and all bands that creates songs like them about the bad cooperation and so on should never make a deal with them because it contradicts with the music they made. If they actually fight for what they believe in, then they would not have give in to the people they were fighting against. So them signing the contracts means that they are just looking for money, and they don't care about their message.