I generally found Merchants of Cool to be quite insightful, but on one point I found it rather hyperbolic. One of the experts interviewed as part of the documentary compared American teens to Africa and the corporations marketing to them to European imperialists. The essential problem with this analogy is that modern teens can choose not to be exploited. The inhabitants of Africa could not simply decide to not be affected by Western conquest, but to a degree we can choose to do exactly that. The mook will always exist as a stereotype in media marketed to teenagers, but I can (and do) choose not to watch that media. (In my case this really isn't even that difficult, as I find the kind of media inhabited by mooks to be quite boring). Likewise, the fact that what is fashionable is chosen by a few large corporations doesn't really matter to someone (like me) whose clothing decisions don't factor in what's "cool" on any given day. It's certainly possible to be exploited by the corporate advertising juggernaut (and many teens are) but it's also possible to escape from it. Most of the entertainment media I consume are webcomics, podcasts, Youtube videos, etc. which have very little direct influence from large corporations. Even when I do watch movies or TV shows, I deliberately avoid those that perpetuate the stereotypes created by companies in their quest to define teen culture. In short, we as the consumers do have the ability to defend ourselves from the commercialization of culture (and the class for which I'm writing this is a significant help in that regard), and it is our choice whether or not we exercise this option. We are being exploited, but it is entirely within our power to avoid this exploitation.
Recently, to go along with its annual awards, Steam (a platform for buying computer games) released this list of their most played games of 2017. While perusing said list, I came to a somewhat depressing realization: all nine of the games with more than 100,000 peak simultaneous players consisted, at their core, of walking around a 3-dimensional environment and shooting people to death. To some this may fit completely with their view of video games as mindless entertainment which promotes violence. But to me it was jarring, possibly because not one of the twenty games in my Steam library adheres to this formula. In my experience video games can be a fascinating artistic medium, but it is difficult to find the gems in the teeming horde of first-person shooters. The overwhelming popularity of this specific genre has distorted the general public's perception of video games, obscuring the fact that, just like other media such as books or movies, they can be used both to offer an easy
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