Quote Originally Posted by LDAHL View Post
This meme gets repeated a lot, presumably to alarm us that we are all puppets of a few corporate overlords. ...Do you care more about what Disney or Comcast thinks, or do they care more about what you think?
I learned about this meme before memes were memes, at least in terms of how we view them today as part of the internet culture. On vacation in Vermont in the early 2000s (so Frugal Dad was absolutely NOT the first reference) I saw a film sponsored by Action Committee for Media Education. I can't even remember what the name of the film was, but it was pretty compelling. And my own experience in marketing corroborates the efficacy of media to "educate" people to an intended message.

There is no doubt about it, we may not be walking zombies, but you have to be naive to believe that in our media-saturated culture our choices are 100% freely made. Or that the conclusions we come to are not influenced by click-bait sound-bytes repeated ad nauseam by the top of the media chain.