Media+Essay+2

If you were training a "cool hunter" to come into your school, what would you train them to look for? Do "cool hunters" engage in a self-fulfilling prophecy by giving the teens they select money, information, and attention (which extend their influence)?

I would ask the cool hunter to look for the students' hobbies and interests. The key to create and market a product lies in how close of a match it can be to the interests/hobbies of the potential consumers. Somehow along the line however, one should also take notice of the personality of the students as well. Some products may correspond well to the personality of some consumers while others may not.

Cool-hunters in my opinion are simply a group of clever vultures who would never miss a chance to scavenge upon the interests of certain people purely for commercial interest. While many of their methods revolve around interviews and focus groups for teenagers in school, the cool hunters had also devised a new method of motivating an increasingly media-savvy generation of teenagers to follow in their commercial footsteps. Part of that includes giving teens the popularity and media attention that they had dreamed of for years. Many of the things that teenagers consider cool today are actually started in the 1990's, and the impression given by the stars at that time gave teenagers the thought to "chase" popularity around and gain both fame and fortune. Much of what the modern media taught today was in itself an effect of what happened during that aftermath. The image that a teenager has to have fame, money and influence to be cool and succeed in society has been ingrained into their malleable minds ever since, increasing the success of the cool hunters and the huge multimedia companies and enterprise that they serve today, so as to continue what legacy the mass media of the past had implanted into the mind of the past generation.

The Media and the cool hunters that peddled the image of the ideal, successful teen began by peddling the opposite image of it in the first place. In **Mark Crispin Miller's** own words, today's media sold images of the anxiety ridden teen as a "polar opposite" of the Ideal, wealthy, successful teen in order to create the mood necessary for the latter to develop. Statements like "lame", "You're not cool" and "You're a douchebag" are also popularised by the media in order to attract more and more teenagers into their fold in the mass marketing media. Teenagers feeling awkward about their looks would most certainly //attempt// to do something against it, and a significant amount of them would somehow end in the attention and the social circles of the cool hunter, who would somehow goad them into becoming the popularised stereotype that the media had always wanted them to be. Take the overriding image of **Stephanie Joanne Germanotta** (better known as **Lady GaGa**) for example. She is a **product** of generations of the Mass Media's thinking and popular image lumped into one. Challenged by the apparent stagnation of Popular Culture and the Public's increasing Media Savviness, Lady GaGa serves as the media's torch for the advertisement of their ideas in the music world. Having stood up as a somewhat controversial artist, the media is hoping to introduce the image that sensuality and freakishness **are** perfectly normal for modern society, and that it is the present way to be "cool". The Media did not even attempt to hide her personal wealth and opulence, to further market that image of "freaky is cool and cool is rich" in the teenage audience's mind. The result? One immediate friend of mine tries to emulate Lady GaGa in all manners of clothing, fashions and mannerisms. The reason? "Lady GaGa is so **//__freakingly rich__//**", she said. (Try to take note on what she said about "freakingly rich"). That, coupled with the interest of hers on that media construct made her as another willing "lackey" of the mass media (out of the millions and billions of others in the "literate" world). I could only shake my head, as another "cash cow" and "zealot" of the mass media was forming right in front of my eyes. I could only imagine what "cool" now means in this media made and media built world.

Aside from the image of consumerism, wealth, coolness and debauchery created by the media to day to cater to the anxious young masses today (also their construction in the first place), the media has also extended its insidious tentacles to the other side. While at first I thought that many Rock and Metal bands are "indie" and are opposed to the mass media in some way, I am shocked to discover from conversations with my elders that they themelves are also in one way subservient to the mass media (albeit as an "alternative" wing). Bands like Iron Maiden, Megadeth, Cradle of Filth, Slayer as well as "hate filled music" like Skrewdriver are in many ways handled by the media in the opposite end. The image of these harsh, violent and angst filled rebels have in one way or another formed an alternate "net" in the mass media is keen to exploit. Take Limp Bizkit for example. While many others in the rock scene **//__detest__//** it for being "mainstream" and being a "sellout", it haven't stopped the media from taking advantage of it to "ensnare" the masses that were seeking out a new source of entertainment in opposition of the "mainstream" media. It's rage filled melodies and lyrics were more marketable to the other masses wishing to "escape" the mainsteam clutter. Inadvertently however, Limp Bizkit had also fell to the mainstream spectrum as well, and it is only a matter of music tastes', influenced much by the media and shoved down the throats of the masses. Even the bands which regarded Limp Bizkit as sellouts are in one way or another acting in the interests of the media (take **Nuclear Blast USA** and **Nuclear Blast Europe** for example). Once you label some things with a pigeonhole, that set of things would cease to be an indie label at all. Just like many of those "anti-establishment" Rock and Metal Bands I mentioned before.

Now only one question remain. What will media and teenage culture in the far future look like? I for one, could only imagine.