At the same time, it's not surprising that it's so hard to grab their attention for more than a few weeks at a time. Adbusters does hit one nail on the head: Culture is constantly being co-opted.

Instant communication is so easy these days it seems entirely possible a fad could be born, live and die betweeen the time you enter a club and the time you leave it. It used to take years for fads and countercultures to be noticed by big business, merchandized, marketed and exploited to the point where market saturation left behind nothing but a bunch of new crap in the landfill and a handful of now even more disenfranchised kids who started it all and had their identities stolen from them.

How long can a movement last once it's been packaged and marketed by big business? In a sense, acceptance is one of the best ways to curb rebellion. How fast do you think the average teenager would pull out their nose-ring if suddenly their mom came home with a stud in her nostril? Similarly, how long can an anti-consumerism/civil rights/animal rights/environmentalist movement last once it's been co-opted by big business and marketed back to you in prime time?