Merchants of Cool

The Frontline production, Merchants of Cool, really opened my eyes to see how manipulated teens are. Marketers treat teenagers as an unreachable phenomenon that can only be accessed through manipulation. We are an industry in itself because we have money we don't need to be spent on bills. The big corporations study young people as a science to discover the secrets to sucking the money out of them. They have come up with two characters to impose on us. The boys are assigned to the Mook, or childlike idiot, and the girls the Midriff, or sexy idol. Teenagers across the world have adopted these roles and bought products to perpetuate them.

It is this pathetic cycle where the marketers study the idolized teenagers and imitate them through their products. After these things have hit the markets, other teenagers catch on and soon everybody is participating. There is a huge downside, however, because as soon as young people notice that everybody has caught on to the trend, it become uncool. This causes the markets to constantly search for the next best thing to one up the previous. When I first heard of this cat chase, I thought, "There must be another way to appeal to teens long term." But after some more thought, I discovered there isn't. A key factor to being a teenager is we are hormonal beings who are very concerned with what other people think and want to grow up faster. The marketers play off these characteristics. If all the corporations were concerned about how they could service us and play to our individuality through their products, then everybody would be fine. We would invest our allowances not in CEO's Hampton homes, but in their desire to help people achieve their dreams. 

I am also confronted with the disappointing reality that I play into this as well. I have become so caught up in the rat race that I cannot stop. I keep running through the ways I could avoid this manipulation, but I am not motivated enough to stop. The truth is, their tactics may be sad and desperate, but they really do work. All of the alternatives to competing for acceptance way too out side of my comfort zone for me to even consider. In fact, the only solution I could think of is moving to the middle of no where, such as working on a rice field in the middle of Thailand, and not accessing the internet or media at all.