The culture industry is just that, an industry with the values of an assembly line, primarily standardization, repetition, efficiency, cost control.

However, with the cultural twist of the need to create both an artificial sense of difference (trivial) and some superficial sense of desirability (often sexual or celebrating one’s uniqueness).

One result is a new level of pseudo-individuality. Where the sense of individual uniqueness is reduced to a fashion statement or image, but a hollowness of critical consciousness below the surface.

At the social level, democracy (power of the people) is reduced to consumerism (people can only act as consumers buying products they have been trained to want). And the capacity for critical thinking is reduced to one-dimension. Consumers only want what they can see and cannot imagine any alternative to what currently exists.