Ideologies are ‘ways of looking at the world' or worldviews that one holds and one's actions are motivated by his/her ideologies. According to the culture industry critique we may erroneously come to believe that our ideologies are uniquely ours, while the fact is that the culture industry predetermines our ideologies and consequently, our actions, our decisions and cultural practices in life. Thus, we may find products of mass culture pleasurable but we need to grasp the crucial political aspect that our worldviews, aesthetics and even relationships are manipulated and predetermined by the culture industry. Also, the products of culture industry render the world illusory. There is social control by mass media. The more we partake of the products of the culture industry, the more we live in an illusory world. It also creates commodity fetishism by hiding the inequalities of the production processes.

When there is consumption of goods of mass culture with little resistance, social hierarchy is maintained and perpetuated as the culture industry serves the exploitative, capitalist ethos. Thus the culture industry gives consent to the dominant ethos; as we give our consent to the cultural order, we also consent eventually to the prevailing social and political order. Culture industry also achieves ‘acceptance of codes and signs'. The culture industry and its various forms are signifying practices because they encode reality and its tool in the process is ‘sameness'. We decode reality the way the culture industry trains us to.