I take your point, but i think you underestimate the power of familiarity to change behavior. I have absolutely no data to back this up, but I strongly suspect

I take your point, but i think you underestimate the power of familiarity to change behavior. I have absolutely no data to back this up, but I strongly suspect that police officers watching blockbuster films and playing GTA affect how they view their jobs (SWATing a house because of a confidential informant says they grow pot, for example... bonkers). The human brain can distinguish fact from fiction, but it still influences their behavior. The culture of celebrity is the same way: stars are familiar to us, so we react to them with the same sense of familiarity that we react to friends. We /know/, intellectually, that they aren't our friends, but they make us feel good, and our behavior is affected by them. Why the heck do people freak out about seeing a person who they saw in a movie? Who cares? This is exactly like advertising, where they are exploiting the power of familiarity to change shopping behavior. Doctors deny that their prescribing behavior could possibly be affected by adverts, but I've worked for pharma, and I could tell you to the penny the ROI on each of those doctors who made such statements while they ate my sandwiches. Psychology is powerful. And even if an /adult/ understands "what is happening" in a cognitive way, their behavior is still influenced. And I would guess that is increased by an order of magnitude for children. These are just several observations, and it's a recurring theme that's occurred to me prior to seeing this blog post. But since it reinforces my preconceptions, I'm going to give it lots of credibility :) Just consider it.