thank you, one!

It’s a lousy argument that completely misses the point entirely. 

Cultivation theory, at it’s baseline, doesn’t say that consuming, say, violent media makes you wanna kill or hurt people. What cultivation theory IS is saying “the proliferation of excessive violent media can influence how the people who consume that media perceive about the world” ie a person with already violent tendencies might be more likely to act on those violent tendencies because, due to the sheer glut of violent media, violence might seem more acceptable than it actually is culturally. 

And this shit is subconscious, you can’t say you’re not affected by it because “you know the difference between fiction and reality”, because often time you don’t actively register that it IS influencing you. Or, in the case of many ads, you do know it’s trying to influence you and you put up guard walls - but that burger on screen DOES look delicious and the Burger King is only down the road so why not grab something to eat? The decline of sharks due to Jaws is people perceiving the sharks as inherently dangerous to human and, thus, to keep people safe, need to be culled. The rise of the KKK in the late 1910′s and early 20′s was due to Birth of a Nation portraying the KKK as sympathetic and cool. The decline of the KKK in the 40s can be attributed to their mocking portrayal Superman radio serials. This shit all matters.