"In The Ingenuity Gap, Thomas Homer-Dixon describes the poverty of an Indian city. Frustrated, he points out that many of the people who could barely feed themselves owned televisions, which they took great pride in. He might not have understood this need, but anyone who has grown up with the box as a third parent knows that television infuses us with a certain value, a kind of individual cachet. 
"When you are watching TV, it is as if the entertainment is just for you. You become special, targeted, a person. TV is a way to escape the burden of say — poverty. Not necessarily because its entertainment value is so great, but because it (1) regularly features the lives of ostensibly normal people, (2) offers the illusion of choice, (3) is 'free' and constant, meaning that you can never be denied — you are entertained when you say you are ready to be entertained, and (4) permits you a connection to the world of celebrities, products, and the good life, no matter how poor or distanced from the nexus of power you may be."
-Hal Niedzviecki
p.80-1, Hello, I'm Special: How Individuality Became the New Conformity. Penguin, 2004.

"How much of your living space is specifically arranged to make it easy for you to interact with devices that allow you to engage with pop-culture, to compose your personal spectacle? ... The message to turn your life into a success story is everywhere, beamed directly into our brains. The issue is not mind control (exactly). We want this stuff. We crave it. We seek it out. Whether on film or TV or in song, the tale of the little guy making good is one that we simply can't get enough of... The majority of us don't want to destroy the system, challenge the mass-market capitalism that degrades culture, and expose celebrity worship as a fraud. To the contrary — we uphold the system; we live for the system. ... Increasingly, the relationship is one of unrequited desire: We want in."[Hence the proliferation of self-publishing of all kinds – blogs, 'vanity CDs,' books, websites, youtube videos, 'backyard wrestling league broadcasts,'  etc., etc. ]
-p.72 & 77 from the same