This should be required viewing in every classroom. It'd be nice to see this revisited on a regular basis, though. It's already dated.

"Guilt money."

Wow. Pathetic.

Frontline ALWAYS gets five stars. Did y'all see the "Cheney's Law" episode?
Also, this is an interesting companion piece to Century of the Self.

This was my favorite Frontline episode, way back.

I got a chance to watch this again while it was sitting in the hopper, and it was even better the second time around, because the video proves itself to be true in the whole "we must kill the things we profit from" insofar as everything featured as examples of passing fads they've created and will destroy, are in fact dead. Limp Bizkit, Insane Clown Posse, Dawson's Creek, Britney Spears.

Also, the concept of Viacom having moles that are supposed to spy on the trends of their peers and relate back to their corporate masters is a hideous concept.

Why didn't these people ever make GG Allin cool? He rolled around in his own shit on stage and sang songs about raping little girls. That's more hardcore than Limp Biscuit and ICP.

Fred Durst is a corporate vice president and a profiteer of rape. That's pretty fucking hardcore.

you guys realize that looking down on consumerism is just another niche-market product to be bought and sold, right? :D

A cousin with Asbergers told me he learned about the "mook" and "middriff" in school. It's good to see he was just missing the goddamn point.

I'm sorry but there are very few moments of actual intelligence in this piece. The few moment are really good - so four stars - but don't you think the rest of it is second rate propeganda?

The conspiracy approach is just tiring: DID YOU KNOW SPRITE AND MTV DID MARKETING TOGETHER? HOW OUTRAGEOUS AND UNBELIEVABLE!

And the reporter doesn't seem to understand really simple concepts like why teens adore WWF or Britney Spears. It's celebration of the id and nothing new.

Sadly, this video didn't keep any teenagers from watching bad movies, listening to horrible overproduced throwaway music, acting like retards in public or drinking Sprite.

I talked to a few of those sprite marketers in high school. They did a presentation for my class on exactly this. Though by that point their problem was that Sprite had become too black and they were trying to whiten it up again (not in so many words, but eh).

Almost made me want to go into marketing.

Marketing, motherfuckers. I still show this to my SOCI 1101 classes every semester, despite it being increasingly out-of-date. Of course, that's easily rectified by a bit of class discussion.

My two favorite wrestling terms are "babyface" and "heel". After learning about various wrestling terms, I sometimes find myself using them to describe many things.

Carny slang is interesting too.

It makes me feel uncomfortable to know that I'm only as valuable as the amount of money I make, but I suppose that those are the breaks.