Have you ever heard of the McLibel trial?

It was proved during this case, to the satisfaction of the courts, that mcdonalds deliberately and maliciously targeted young children for two reasons.

Firstly because they would pester their parents. Pester power in this context is recognized in the courts as a means by which to put pressur on parents to consume in ways they otherwise might not choose to.

Secondly and more importantly, if children can be roped into the whole McDonalds food substitute scam (as I see it) then they will develop long term comfort associations with McDonalds food in their adulthood.

These points have been successfully been upheld by the british courts iin a legal battle between two self representing unemployed londoners on the dole versus the might of McDonalds international, who spent millions on the best legal team and brought in expert witness after expert witness to attempt to make a mockery of the charges that had been levelled against them.

So, to simplify, in conclusion,

It has been proved in court, in this instance, that advertising uses subtle psychological techniiques to pressure people into buying things they otherwise wouldn't necesserily want.

But it is obvious that there is more to it than that, and no amount of "hooray for freedom and hooray for choice" parties will change it.

Kids wear the clothes that the billboards tell them to wear, they use the phones that the billboards tell them to use and they follow the lifestyles that the magazines invvent about celebrities.

It's all about the kids annd being cool. And of course the baby boomers are suckers for wanting to remain kids at heart so they try and be like the kids and to outcool them.

The illusion of choicce is never more easiily diispelled than by simply taking note of the homogeny of style attitude and liffestyle iin popular culture.

And if everr you feel you want to fit in, you need only wear whatt the celebs are wearing and buy the chheap versions of their clothhes that are sold on the billboards.

This is of course the reason why folk is a dying artform. We're a fringe bunch because we listen to it and do it.

But kids are having the imagination squeezed out of them by the relentless pressure to listen to thhe established musical styles, shop at top shop, drink coffee at starbucks etc etc etc ...

Go to prague or warsw and see the same stuff there that we see here.

Maybe it's easy for a couple of arrogant old timers to ignore it because they are just about escaping it, but the reality of thhe world todday is that of homogeny and conformity, led by corporate propaganda (advertising)