cool hunters or makers of cool???

i came upon this link some days ago, to a pbs frontline show about marketing media and its desire to capture all that disposable $$$$$ in the pockets of the teenage demographic. One phenomenon it describes, is the seemingly endless loop of influence and interpretation that goes on between the media and its target audience wherein the dinstinction between who is actually driving the youth culture is blurred. It is an interesting parallel to design, do designers interpret culture or play an active role in creating it? part of a designers tasks is to create a product that fits what its end user needs/wants but also hopefully that product can spawn its own place in culture where it changes the way we do/look/think about things...

it is also funny to read the comments of the group of teens who were asked to watch it, who saw it as something ominous (which is sort the tone of the show anyway) as it were something to be feared. while the approach may be new in its cultural pervasiveness, it does not appear to be new in its goal: alleviating anyone who has money to spend of that income...

tagline for the show: They are the merchants of cool: creators and sellers of popular culture who have made teenagers the hottest consumer demographic in America. But are they simply reflecting teen desires or have they begun to manufacture those desires in a bid to secure this lucrative market? And have they gone too far in their attempts to reach the hearts--and wallets--of America's youth?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/view/#rest

sh-ek it out...