Mass culture creates the very needs it then claims to satisfy

Evidence

All mass culture is fundamentally adaptation. However, this adaptive character, the monopolistic filter which protects it from any external rays of influence which have not already been safely accommodated within its reified schema, represents an adjustment to the consumers as well. The pre-digested quality of the product prevails, justifies itself and establishes itself all the more firmly in so far as it constantly refers to those who cannot digest anything not already pre-digested. It is baby-food: permanent self-reflection based upon the infantile compulsion towards the repetition of needs which it creates in the first place. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 113

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the core ‘pre-digested’ mechanism of the culture industry — adaptations to consumers that factory-produce their own demand.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s stated goal of running Adorno on post-death culture; the ‘baby-food’ mechanism is the falsifiable core they’ll test. — connects to: Mass culture’s technical rationality masks class domination as consumer demand. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 94; The culture industry rules by manufacturing the needs it satisfies — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 107; Predetermined needs reduce the consumer to the eternal object of the industry — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 110 (+6 more)
• APHORISMS: A near-timeless mechanism: a system that invents the need it then fills.