"Making Cents Out of Teens: Merchants of Cool" Response

I never thought that so much of the teen culture had to do with marketing and business. After watching  "Merchants of Cool" the documentary from Frontline, my perception of American teen culture changed. I was appalled by how media companies like MTV have played an incessant role in what is considered cool. The problem with the companies having this much control over teens is  that they see teens as consumers they can capitalize on. There was even an analogy that states that teens were like a country to colonize. Their value for teens indicates that they are not concerned for the well-being of people but only thinking about making money. MTV is  like one long infomercial because they are always attempting to sell something. They find ways to make us think that "cool" is tangible ,and they trap us in a cycle that forces us to conform to the new cool. As soon as one trend picks up, they search for another by trying to reach out to those who consider themselves outcasts. An example is how they marketed the rap rock band Limp Bizkit. At first, rap rock was an unpopular genre but as soon as  they advertised  Limp Bizkit as the new cool , it became more prominent.  Also in their  search to find extremes and make it mainstream, they have no regard for the effect. In one of Limp Bizkit's concerts ,total chaos broke out when the crowd broke numerous items and assaulted people. There were even four reported cases of rape. Even when these atrocities occurred,media companies did not care about the stuff they promoted. Also the mook and midriff personalities that media outlets created are detrimental to soceity. The mook is a character that capitalizes on the testosterone driven madness of adolescence. He isn't necessarily a representation of the teen boys but he has this hypermasculine behavior that seems to be normalized.The midriff is a female character who is consumed with her looks and displays her sexuality. However this character made women objects and not people; their worth was measured by their look. Both personalities were an attempt to sell cool and mostly their attempts were successful. There were even many girls lining up to be the next big midriff. All of the market research and advertisement was not about appealing to teens as people but simply as customers. The more I think about these major companies and their motives, I get shocked. I find that these careful strategies such as cool hunting and stealth marketing are unbelievably efficient. Too much of our culture  depends on the media but at the same time they claim to only be responding to what we want.  In reality they give us what they want and with that they have come to define our customs and values.  I find it extremely frightening to think that companies with the only objective of making money, have the power to shape our norms and what we values.