Most people work 40-plus hours a week at jobs they don’t like to buy things they don’t need.

We are a society of alienated individuals held together by a culture industry that serves the interests of capitalism. Popular culture is akin to a factory producing standardized cultural goods to manipulate the masses into passivity; the easy pleasures available through consumption of popular culture make people docile and content, no matter how difficult their economic circumstances. Culture industries cultivate false needs; that is, needs created and satisfied by capitalism. True needs, in contrast, are freedom, creativity and genuine happiness.