Do you feel that society is secretly conditioned/primed to like certain things?

Yes, meaningless things have taken precedent to sustainability, like space, prescription drugs, psychology, experts, all are meaningless to our individual lifes, but we are conditioned to accept and follow.

Cultural values are definitely a thing, although they can be hard to identify because they feel so normal until you put yourself into a different culture.

Yes, look for instance at the enormous fortune generated by the Peanuts comic strip, whose characters have been conceived to have almost universal appeal. The actors Clint Eastwood and Audrey Hepburn appeal almost universally to men and women respectively. Any archetype is likely to have wide appeal, similarly to the fact that facial symmetry, good health and fertility define sex appeal. A TV show such as Friends was almost guaranteed to succeed.

I don’t think it’s really all that secretive.

I honestly don't care about stuff like that.

But I think it's fine if majority of the people like similar stuff, it gives us the feeling of community.

They don’t call it advertising for nothing. Then you have the “nudge” unit. We are being played and manipulated constantly.

society is a phantom image of a multitude of people connected by social ties. society has no will of its own and cannot force you to do anything.

there are what are called "egregors." these are thoughtforms that are generated by many people when they communicate. egregors are vectors of social will.

in other words, society naturally zombifies itself. artificial influence on the correction of egregoric thoughtforms can be accomplished through elements of social engineering.

Definitely