You really need to learn how to think on your own.
If you just follow the script you are provided by default, they win and you loose your soul. In practice, doing something about it for many people means jumping from the pan that is mainstream culture into the fires of the alternative counter-culture scene.
Once you do that, it does not mean that you will automatically be given a ticket to Nirvana. Instead, you will find a different group of puppeteers who will try to feed you with a different script. Trust in your gut and challenge everything you are told. After you have done it a few times, you will be able to pick up the common patterns and the differences between the foundational myths of each tribe.
At the end of day, you never will see reality as it is. We are social creatures and we always experience reality as socially mediated phenomena. However, once you have switched lenses a few times, you begin to grasp how each leans distorts reality, and your mind begin to make corrections.
(I learned this be virtue of have been raised a devout Catholic. University and Science delivered terrible blows to my world view, which caused significant pain during my early twenties, but this prevented my imagination from being too caught into the modern myth of Progress).
Once you have tried maybe a dozen lenses, and picked up two or three that let you see reality in a way that is both useful and meaningful to yourself, then you might be able to try and make a new lens from scratch. Most people never reach this far; I am 39 and at least know I am quite far from there yet.
> So is it any surprise that people eat up what the media sells them? For many people, there's not a more attractive alternative.
I have given you one alternative, but there is a price. When time is due, please pay it forward.
Living a nomadic life or in big cities does not prevent you from making deep connection and maintain relationships with others. It just requires you to have the ability to love others, and higher skills at forming long-lasting friendships. It's can be harder than if you were living in a small village, but definitely possible.
It seems logical to me that basing a relationship off of branding would lead to transient and shallow relationships. You should seek to have a better way of self identifying with people. Say perhaps by the type of person they are instead of the collection of things they own.
But I don't think that forming bonds this way, or attempting to, is sustainable in the long run. Like you alluded to, those friendships are superficial at best.
Lots of millennials are sedated with the hugeness of internet life. There's a great sense of restless apathy amongst the generation, and an easy way to revitalize your life on the surface is through toys and shiney fabric.
What makes you mad about society? Find a meaningful way to do something about it. What are you passionate about? Find a way to contribute to that. What is missing in your community? What can you offer to help make it happen?
Look for ways to provide real value to other people's lives - I don't mean helping them to live the same meaningless life you're expressing apathy for, look to make a real difference. It's amazing when you give yourself to others how that generosity is repaid with real friendship and a sense of kinship with others.
Those of us who grew up in big cities and moved away often have nothing to return to, nor would staying have helped. I'm an only child, and my parents are still together, but no longer live where I grew up. Everyone I knew from my childhood is scattered throughout the country. The neighborhood I grew up in was bulldozed and is now luxury condos. This is a common story among millennials.
People ultimately want a sense of belonging to SOMETHING. We're jaded about many of the traditional societal support structures like religion, marriage, work, or politics. As a result, many millennials identify with brands instead. Branding is enormous among millennials, even when looking at cohorts from previous generations at the same age. It's how millennials express their personality -- not by being creative, but by mashing up things that are already widely popular into our own identities. There are even counter-culture brands that let you identify with hating everything about consumer culture.
What do you do if you're not from anywhere? You don't know how to belong to a tight-knit social group because your friends have been disposable your whole life (and vice-versa). So you drift along in a consumer-oriented delirium, and if you're lucky you can join your life with some other lost soul so you're not so lonely. You are ambitious because let's face it, what else do you have going on?
So is it any surprise that people eat up what the media sells them? For many people, there's not a more attractive alternative.