Television is also mimetic, spurring viewers to imitate behaviors seen on-screen, and the behaviors the industry wants to foster are consumptive. There’s plenty of dense academic literature on this subject, but nothing speaks louder than the enormous ad budgets devoted to TV, stoking the already robust sociopathic appetite. At least parents today understand the dynamic, and since the late 1970s, with the introduction of affordable VCRs and purchasable content like DVDs and downloads, they have been able to reduce or eliminate the number of conventional ads their children see (somewhat undone
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