A lot of the mods went to college and studied marketing, no doubt. (Let's see if this one gets through.) My apologies to the Testosterone Sundowners, but this stuff gets analysis in contemporary sociology. And it is worth reading.

 

"The individual is thus both a receiver and transmitter of current values dominated by a multi-million pound advertising industry, itself embedded within a corporate media structure and governed by an indiscernible few. Those at the top have vested interests in the propagation of preferred consumption lifestyles—i.e. those which guarantee increased spending and profits in a ‘work and spend’ culture where consumption is the driving wheel of an economy which, in turn, benefits those with the most power and control. 1 Yet personal values and self-esteem are managed by the advertising industry which now, through its financial force majeure, determines news coverage and program content in the US nationwide media, ironically insisting ‘freedom of choice’ still being regulated by ‘consumer sovereignty’. But these assertions are misleading, as we shall see."

 

from : 

Consumerism: seduction via the current media - book chapter

John Graham Wilson. https://www.academia.edu/34010793/Consumerism_seduction_via_the_current_media_book_chapter

Are you suggesting that the ever so truthful and transparent corporate media might somehow be up to no good? Up to something underhand? 

I am totally shocked. 

Not Bangkok related, topic moved to the Pub.