I know, deep down in my heart, that Matthew McConaughey is not my friend. Despite my lingering soft spot for his charming Texan accent, his role in my life amounts to nothing more than pixels on a screen. Still, that did little to ease the pang of betrayal I felt after spotting the actor in this commercial for the software company Salesforce, bemoaning a broken arm in the back room of an overcrowded hospital: 

“If my healthcare provider had AgentForce, the powerful AI from Salesforce, an AI agent would have automatically paired me with the right specialist hours ago,” he mutters, that sweet, sweet Texan drawl camouflaging the dystopian premise of the ad. (Apparently, in America’s dysfunctional hospital system, your odds of healing a broken bone depend on the use of a new AI program.)

I couldn’t help but conjure a word from deep within my psyche, one I hadn’t heard in eons: sellout.

In recent years, our pop culture landscape has become so dominated by athletic-wear brand deals and laxative pill endorsements that it’s hard to remember an alternative. A-listers now seem to treat art like a side hustle, and advertising as their main career. It’s not enough for McConaughey to earn millions by smoldering through the window of a luxury Lincoln SUV, or lounging shirtless for Dolce & Gabbana cologne. He just had to become the creative director for Wild Turkey Bourbon, launch his own “Pantalones Organic Tequila” brand, and now, lend his rugged charisma to AI platforms. 

A few decades ago, the very idea of an artist using their platform to shill products was not only considered tacky, but a moral failing—a betrayal of one’s fanbase and a stain on their integrity. 

That’s why American stars travelled to Japan to film commercials; the shame of being caught in an advertisement could dissolve years of goodwill they’d built with the public. (Just look at Tommy Lee Jones. Stateside, he’s known for his Oscar-winning gravitas, but overseas, he’s been the face of Suntry canned coffee since 2006.) It’s the whole premise of Lost in Translation: a washed up, ashamed Bill Murray has to hide out in Tokyo just to promote a whiskey brand. Today, he’d proudly name it “Murray Malört” and slap his own face on the bottle. 

It’s no longer possible to pump gas without being assaulted by an L.E.D. screen blasting commercials, which means the details of the onslaught start to blur. But an unmissable pattern has formed in marketing, best illustrated by corporations’ favorite holiday: the Super Bowl. In the last five years, the number of Super Bowl ads featuring a celebrity has skyrocketed to 72 percent—more than double the rate from 2010—and most of those ads include multiple stars. (You’re telling me they got David Beckham, Jennifer Aniston, and David Schwimmer in one commercial? Take my money!)

Celebrities are no longer scared to trade the public’s admiration for a paycheck, because they no longer have to trade. Sure, McConaughey could live indefinitely off the dividends from Interstellar. But if he’ll face zero backlash for shamelessly hawking liquor and AI platforms, why wouldn’t he? 

To understand how we lost our dignity, we need to trace the mass commercialization of art—and with it, the disappearance of American counterculture. After all, if everything is for sale, there’s no such thing as a “sellout.” 

Pact with the Devil

In the 1960s and ‘70s, the penalty for corporate collusion was exile. Jim Morrison famously flew off the handle when The Doors agreed to license “Light My Fire” to Buick in 1967, screaming at his bandmates: “It’s corporate! You guys just made a pact with the devil!” He then phoned Buick himself and threatened to smash one of their cars on live television if the ad aired. Drummer John Densmore later reflected on the outburst with pride: “I guess that is one of the reasons why I miss the guy.”

Morrison’s fury made sense: rock ‘n roll was centered on rebellion. The movement wasn’t just a threat to pearl-clutching parents, but to “the establishment” in general, including corporate America. If rock was the religion of counterculture, then using it to sell cars meant sacrilege. 

Nowhere was this anti-consumerist ethos more evident than in the fields of Bethel, New York in August 1969. The largest music festival in history at the time, Woodstock drew a crowd of over 400,000 people—only about half of whom even paid for a ticket. Once the crowd overwhelmed the infrastructure, organizers declared it a free event, allowing hordes of unwashed 20-somethings to spill into the surrounding farmland. Even more astonishing by today’s standards, Woodstock had zero corporate sponsors. No branded tents, no logo-covered banners, no “Official Snack of the Revolution.” 

Contrast that to today’s festivals, where “selling out” is structural. At New Orleans Jazz Fest in Louisiana, it’s impossible to avoid the Shell logo—just in case you forget who’s sinking the state’s coastline. At last year’s Austin City Limits, each stage was branded by a different corporate titan: the T-Mobile Stage, the Honda Stage, the Miller Lite Stage, and most egregiously, the American Express Stage (where the headliners performed, of course). Amex cardholders entered the festival through their own separate line, relaxed in exclusive air-conditioned lounges, and received early access to limited-edition merch. Corporate presence doesn’t just fund the show, it defines the physical space and the social hierarchy within it. (And sure, the mythology surrounding Woodstock tends to blur some more complicated truths about the era. But as far as consumerism goes, the contrast is still stark.)

By 1971, just two years after Woodstock, the music world had lost Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and that Buick-bashing Jim Morrison. The tentative hope of the Summer of Love was soon replaced by the more nihilistic nonconformity of punk rock. These spiky-haired anarchists didn’t want “free love,” and they definitely weren’t selling it. 

In The Clash’s “Lost in the Supermarket,” the archetypal punk rock disdain for capitalism shines through: “I can no longer shop happily / I came in here for that special offer / A guaranteed personality.” When the Sex Pistols released "God Save the Queen” in 1977, following their explosive first tour, the lyrics incited a full-blown moral panic across England. (Apparently fans of the monarchy didn’t like the rhymes “fascist regime” and “she ain’t no human being.”)

After Johnny Rotten first performed the song, one politician even suggested that punk rockers should be buried in mass graves: "Most of these groups would be vastly improved by sudden death,” said Bernard Brook-Partridge, a Conservative member of the Greater London Council. “They are unbelievably nauseating ... the antithesis of humankind. I would like to see somebody dig a very, very large, exceedingly deep hole and drop the whole bloody lot down it." 

That same Johnny Rotten, by the way, would later appear in a commercial for Country Life Butter. Because the real turning point wasn’t punk’s decline. It was the launch of MTV in 1981.

MTV Cashes In

When Music Television burst into American homes, it ushered in an entirely new era for advertising. The 24-hour TV channel didn’t just kill the radio star—it also birthed the corporate celebrity. With the click of a remote, companies were given access to a direct line of information on what the youth found cool. Soon, advertising execs began to copy the DIY aesthetics of the underground. 

A 1989 New York Times article titled “How MTV Has Rocked Television Commercials” analyzed the channel’s impact, after Coca-Cola enlisted a punk rock filmmaker to direct their latest ad: 

Consider how advertising agencies took to Mustapha Kahn, a 26-year-old television commercial director with Vanguard Films Inc., after he showed them the $3,000 video he made late last year for the punk rock band Rude Buddha. 

Mr. Kahn's most recent spot, for Coca-Cola, cost 100 times more than the Rude Buddha video, yet it used many of the same techniques, including slow motion, split screens, quick cuts, unnaturally bright coloring and, most prominently, the use of music.

Before long, it became difficult to tell where MTV’s music programming ended and their commercial breaks began. Philip B. Dusenberry, an advertising executive for Pepsi-Cola and Apple Computer, admitted that the channel had profoundly shaped young consumers’ habits.

''MTV's impact, first and foremost, is as a teacher,” he told the Times. “It has educated people, particularly young people, to accept lots of information in a short period of time.'' 

Dusenberry might not have realized the long-term effects of that impact, but “educate to accept” is an eerily apt description for advertising today. If we bombard you with enough product placement, enough celebrity sponsorship, and enough endless pleas to purchase, you might just accept it as normal. 

However calculated MTV’s tactics, they worked. Michael Jackson’s groundbreaking “Billie Jean” video debuted in 1983, helping to cement the channel as a cultural force. That same year, Jackson signed a multimillion-dollar endorsement deal with Pepsi—a partnership that marked a turning point in the marriage of pop music and corporate sponsorship. Tina Turner and David Bowie soon followed suit, signing deals with the brand. 

Not every artist was eager to embrace the era of the endorsement deal. Neil Young fired back in 1988 with This Note’s for You:

“Ain’t singin’ for Pepsi / Ain’t singin’ for Coke / I don’t sing for nobody / Makes me look like a joke.” 

MTV banned the video. The blacklist only made Young’s point clearer: the industry had chosen a side, and it wasn’t with the holdouts.

Maybe no one embodied the tension between anti-corporate ideals and mainstream success more than Nirvana. When the band left their small Seattle label Sub Pop to release Nevermind with Geffen Records—one of the “big six” corporate labels at the time—Kurt Cobain acknowledged complaints from the purist faction of his fanbase.

“I don’t blame the average seventeen-year-old punk-rock kid for calling me a sellout,” he told Rolling Stone. “I understand that. And maybe when they grow up a little bit, they’ll realize there’s more things to life than living out your rock & roll identity so righteously.” 

It’s almost nostalgic to think that Nirvana’s version of “selling out” meant signing to a major record label, instead of naming their fourth album 0% APR Discover Credit Card, the way a band might today. 

By the end of the 20th century, the corporate capture of counterculture had entered its final phase. The clearest symbol of that shift came in the year 1999, when promoters tried to resurrect the spirit of Woodstock. Instead, they created Woodstock ‘99, a festival so nakedly commercialized and mismanaged it felt like a parody of the original. 

Sponsored by Hot Topic, Pepsi, and AT&T, the event charged hefty ticket prices and quickly descended into chaos. Water supplies dwindled by the first day, and under the blistering, 100-degree heat, vendors charged $4 a bottle—the equivalent of $8 today—to dehydrated, sunburned attendees. Some people reported paying up to $50. Three people died. Rampant sexual assaults and rioting marred the weekend—which was broadcast live on MTV, via pay-per-view, starting at $60 a package. 

Endorsement Is the Product

Part of the cultural shift is economic. Just as advertisers ramped up their pursuit of musicians, artists saw their most reliable source of income disappear. When a rudimentary music-sharing service called Napster debuted in 1999, the industry was transformed forever.

Time Magazine writes:

Over the course of the next decade, rock and pop music sales fell by half, and Napster and other sites like it complicated things by planting the idea that consumers didn’t have to pay for music.

Since then, streaming has completely obliterated the financial model for musicians. Spotify is notoriously cryptic about how it pays artists—the company avoids offering a fixed per-stream rate, and instead cites a murky formula based on factors like listener location and subscription type. But real-world case studies tell a clearer story: artists typically receive fractions of pennies per stream. In 2020, composer Zoë Keating told Business Insider that for her, a single stream from Apple Music paid $0.012, while on Spotify, she’d receive only $0.003 after distributor fees.

Spotify is quick to point out that they have “no knowledge of the agreements that artists and songwriters sign with their labels … so we can’t answer why a rightsholder’s payment comes to a particular amount in a particular month.” 

But even independent artists—who theoretically own all the rights to their own music—say they’re paid next to nothing. Iranian-Dutch musician Sevdaliza, who releases music under her own label, shared that on average, 1 million streams amount to an artist being paid $2,500: “Deduct taxes, management and cost of product. How are we expected to ever make music sustainable?”

Ads are more than tempting revenue for artists; they’re necessary to stay afloat. 

But A-listers don’t have that excuse. So why is Billy Idol pushing Workday’s new AI assistant? Why is Eric Andre promoting the sports betting app FanDuel? Why do dozens of celebrities feel comfortable exploiting the public’s affection to promote crypto and credit cards? The answer might lie in what Americans now consider aspirational. 

In 2009, the two most popular career goals listed by middle-school girls were “actress” and “musician,” while boys of the same age opted for “video game creator” and “professional athlete.” Now, compare those goals with this depressing survey from 2023, which shows that the majority of Gen-Zers (defined as people aged 13 to 26) would choose to be a full-time social media influencer if possible. And it’s not just young people; 41 percent of all adults said the same. 

That statistic is alarming for several reasons, but perhaps most sinister is its implications for consumerism. The goal isn’t to be something anymore; it’s to sell something. 

Young consumers’ blind faith in endorsements has grown significantly in recent years. Between 2019 and 2023, the percentage of Gen Z and Millennials who said they trusted social media influencers when deciding to purchase a product rose from 51 percent to 61 percent. Interestingly, our faith in celebrities to tell us what to buy took a concurrent and even steeper jump, from 40 percent to 56 percent. And what about our trust in the opinions of friends and family? That number actually dropped by about five percentage points.

Content creators and starving artists may hustle because they have to, but A-listers do it because they can. Advertising is no longer embarrassing; if anything, it’s viewed as glamorous. As an added bonus, they don’t even have to start from scratch: The public is already listening. 

You might have noticed one of the most insidious forms of this phenomenon while driving to work or taking a jog with your headphones in. For some reason, podcast hosts have universally decided to lend their full, authentic voices to sponsorship scripts. It’s not like they’re playing a character in a commercial. First, they lull the listener into a false sense of security—built after twenty minutes of authoritative commentary on the Russia-Ukraine war, or Trump’s tariffs—before smoothly transitioning: “Anyway guys, as you know, I’ve been thinking lately about how important health is. That’s why I have been loving these meal boxes from HelloFresh!”

Often, they’ll riff off-script to make the ad sound more natural. Even Jon Stewart, longtime critic of corporate power, is guilty. In a recent episode of The Weekly Show, Stewart interrupts a discussion about President Biden’s cognitive ability to plug a cat food brand: “I was once a cat-own—well, I don't want to say cat owner, that probably makes it sound like the arrangement was not mutually beneficial,” he laughs, using his standard self-deprecating tone. “But I had two cats and I didn't have this kind of food. My cats, if they were alive today, I think my cats would say to me, ‘Hey, why are you feeding me this when you could feed me Smalls?’” 

Oh, come on, man. It almost feels tongue-in-cheek, like he’s poking fun at the ridiculousness of it all. And I get it: there’s producers, editors, and sound-designers to pay, and ads bring in revenue. But at least when the Daily Show cut to a break, I was under no illusion that Jon Stewart personally endorsed each company that purchased an ad spot on Comedy Central. Why make it sound like you, Jon Stewart, have strong opinions on cat food?

Even worse are the podcasters who openly promote questionable or downright scammy products. Just take a look at the sheer number of celebrities who swear by BetterHelp. If you’ve listened to even a single podcast lately, you’ve probably heard ads for the shady online therapy service. The company has sponsored over 58,000 podcast episodes in the last five years alone, many of which are hosted by beloved media figures who urge their audiences to join the app to improve their mental health.

Ousted CNN host Don Lemon is one such supporter: “Men today feel immense pressure to perform, to provide, and to keep it all together,” he said in a recent episode of the Don Lemon Show podcast. “So what do you do? The most convenient, and I believe the most affordable and accessible therapy you’re going to get out there is BetterHelp.com.” 

Lemon goes on to offer his fans 10 percent off their first month. What he fails to mention is that two years ago, BetterHelp was fined by the Federal Trade Commission for sharing users’ private health data with advertisers. The FTC found that BetterHelp “used and revealed consumers’ email addresses, IP addresses, and health questionnaire information to Facebook, Snapchat, Criteo, and Pinterest for advertising purposes,” including questions about why the patient needed therapy, what their concerns were, and whether they’d been treated before. 

This betrayal of people seeking mental healthcare wasn’t even hidden in BetterHelp’s fine print. The company straight-up lied about it. In 2021, after ten people died during a crowd crush at Travis Scott’s Astroworld Festival, BetterHelp teamed up with the rapper to offer traumatized attendees a singular month of free therapy (how generous!). Naturally, fans and media outlets were wary of the deal, leading the company to publish an FAQ page. “The last part of the FAQ addressed BetterHelp’s data privacy practices: ‘Is information members enter on BetterHelp ever sold to any advertising platform or third party?’” writes Rolling Stone. “The company’s response was an emphatic, ‘No.’” 

That press release is still available on BetterHelp’s website, but curiously, the specific question regarding data privacy appears to have been deleted. 

Is it really possible that legions of celebrities like Don Lemon, who has now read over 57 advertisements for BetterHelp on his own podcast, are completely unaware of this history? Hey Don, aren’t you a goddamn reporter? Why don’t you put that journalism degree to use and take ten seconds to Google the corporation you’re promoting? 

In ad after ad, the blatant disconnect between celebrities’ carefully crafted personas and the products they promote is, frankly, insulting. Just get a load of George Clooney, who recently reprised his dashing-detective character to sell disposable coffee pods for Nestlé. Yes, the same multi-billion dollar corporation known for its use of child slave labor in Africa, illegal water-pumping from drought-stricken Native American reservations, and lying about infant nutrition to sell baby formula in the Global South. Hey George, doesn’t everyone love you because your wife Amal is an international human rights lawyer? Couldn’t you stick to making another Oceans movie?

This is the new face of consumerism: winking, ironic, and emerging from the mouth of someone we respect. As Thomas Frank wrote in Commodify Your Dissent, “Nobody wants you to think they're serious today, least of all Time Warner… Corporate America is not an oppressor but a sponsor of fun, provider of lifestyle accoutrements, facilitator of carnival, our slang-speaking partner in the quest for that ever-more apocalyptic orgasm."

Celebrities are the perfect mouthpieces for this shift because we trust them, and they’re willing to cash in on that affection. Forty years ago, advertising co-opted rebellion—but the brilliance of today’s machine is that it doesn’t need to anymore. Out of exhaustion, or simply because we fell for it, we stopped rebelling altogether.

Still, it's not too late to bring back some shame. Not the kind that ruins lives, but enough to make an A-lister think twice before lending their credibility to protein powders and crypto casinos. We can start by treating each new promo code with the skepticism it deserves—and remembering that no one with a tequila brand is actually your friend.