Random Thought: We Are Their World

You don't get to succeed at the game of rolling out wholly invented, manufactured, international super-celebrities along the lines of Justin Bieber, the Kardashians, and the latest iPhone, unless you've successfully created an international framework through which and in which those products can so massively, and so perversely invasively disseminate and flourish, like so many maggots, parasitic wasps, and bacteria in a corpse bloating down by the lake.

Most unfortunately, and obviously: that framework has been created. And it's made of us. Countries and countries and countries of us. Just waiting for the next super-celebrity to come rolling out of the factory.

We are losing this one.

Update: This graph says so much about what I just wrote:

This is the most remarkable chart that I've seen in some time. An extraordinarily important trend: pic.twitter.com/p5CpqdAc6k via @ryanlcooper
— Justin Wolfers (@JustinWolfers) September 24, 2014