Such ads have become increasingly common within the last fifty or so years, as other elements of cultural life tell Americans that the western frontier is closed. Therefore, commercialism is playing off our yearning for a new frontier, one which we can still romanticize.

The next step of the western frontier is through the World Wide Web. As print advertising has moved into massive online advertising, the western romanticized image has also gone digital. The online world itself represents a new frontier to be conquered, both by capitalism and the individual consumer; "Like the western frontier, the e-frontier is vitally significant to American economic and strategies of interests that were manifested first in continental (and now wired) expansion;" (McLure 458). It embodies the feeling of discovering a whole new world, a whole new playing ground which is then to be settled and explored. According to research, "the cyber frontier also...
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