The chains of modern life

Rousseau famously said 'man is born free but he is everywhere in chains', referring to the chains of society of his days, such as absolutist monarchy and absolutist church, and the definition of people rigidly by class, background and creed. While some of those chains are broken in the modern day and some remain, I'd like to use his chains to describe modern pop culture. Anyone who has really considered modern existence will realise that modern pop culture has created many chains for the modern mind. All the forms of media project some ideal human existence and some ideal human form that they try to ram at us in the hope of boosting their sales, as after all everyone wishes to better themselves. This is essentially what celebrity culture is, some mythical lifestyle that the celebrities themselves don't lead which keeps us chained to consumerism and chasing a happiness that if achieved will still be vague and hollow. It's used to sell any product you can think of, and even unlikely targets such as food and drink are target for this lifestyle selling. How many people don't have an immediate list of 100 close 'cool' friends they can afford to constantly meet up with to go to life changing gigs but have an iphone? How many people aren't involved in a risqué love triangle with models of different nationalities have a sports car? When people realise these products haven't brought them the lifestyle the adverts subliminally promised they go and buy the next similar product the companies have produced. Modern capitalism is still after all capitalism, it is driven towards profit and relies on endless production and consumption to keep growing. And modern culture has now become a mirror for this capitalism, for capitalism is the only God left to the majority of people. The sparkly new products are the new holy relics, the shop floors the hallow churches. And with all this flood of information relating to capitalism and consumerism, people often find themselves unable to accept truer intellectual values and ideas.