Merchants of Cool

Corporations make 150 billion dollars from teenagers only and thus, teenagers are compared to Africa. The only reason corporations are able to make this much money off teenagers is because they need to look good. And since teenagers today have a larger population than their parents, it is easier for corporations to just target teenagers and make the maximum profit. Teenagers get their money from parents, who feel guilty because they do not spend enough time with their kids so they make it up using money. Therefore, I think the solution, or one of the many solutions, is to find another method to please teenagers without money.

The other problem is the number of advertisements teenagers are exposed to during their lifetime. Everyday, they see approximately 3000 discrete advertisements; they may not be aware of the advertisements but the advertisements are there. I think these discrete advertisements affect teenagers when they decide how to look cool. When they seek to look cool, their brain remembers these images from the advertisements, so teenagers imitate the images without consciously knowing where the idea come from. It is like a reaction they get from their brain (the bloop-bloop-bloop) when they think of ways to become cool. But I do not think the advertisements are the target of the solution. Advertising is the best way to inform the world of the useful and harmless products that are out there (if there is one). Yes, corporations are using advertisements to make profit, but I still think that if parents did not give their kids money, corporations would not be able to make money off teenagers. It is unhealthy to base parent-child relationships on money because if the money is not there one day, how else can the parent keep the child happy?

Advertising is one way corporations make money off young people. The other is to make "the market" feel like they have power, that they control what are in stores. When the guy found a group of kids and asked them for their feedback on what is cool, the kids felt that their opinion mattered, that they change the "hot" products. John felt that he was special when MTV went to his house to interview him and he fell for the trap; that corporations use one person to generalize the whole population. People on the streets felt cool when marketers of Look Look took pictures of their looks so they felt comfortable flaunting the looks. This is how corporations turn feelings into a weapon again teenagers. They make you feel important, significant, and then they grab all the information they can get out of you so they can make products you would like to buy to make you feel even more "good" about yourself.