The role of marketing and media in shaping cultural traditions — to what extent can advertising and media rewrite old cultural habits?
Lately I’ve been thinking about how much media actually shapes the stuff we end up calling “tradition.” It hit me when I remembered how, back in my childhood, certain holiday rituals in our family suddenly changed just because a new TV show made something trendy. My parents started buying the “cool” decorations they kept seeing in ads, and over a few years it felt like the old things we used to do quietly faded out. So now I'm wondering: can marketing and media really overwrite what used to be genuine cultural habits, or are they just speeding up natural changes that would’ve happened anyway?
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Funny you brought this up, because I recently stumbled across https://opgram.com/how-a-foreign-game-became-more-indian-than-india/ — it talks about how a foreign game blended into everyday life so smoothly that people eventually treated it as if it had always been part of their culture. Your story reminded me of my own family too, because a lot of our “traditions” were honestly shaped by whatever we kept seeing on TV or social media. It wasn’t intentional, just small things creeping in until they became normal. I don’t think media completely erases old habits, but it definitely nudges people into trying new stuff, and when enough people adopt it, suddenly it feels traditional.