Pop culture is inescapable and there's nothing we can do about it. In "Escape From Pop Culture", by Diablo Cody, she writes about how she goes on a camping trip to try to get away from everything and by the end of the trip all she could think about was pop culture references relating to everything she was doing. There are positives and negatives to pop culture and that's okay because nothing is ever going to be perfect.
Pop culture can help bring people together who could've never met. Many people we hang out with are most likely people who we share the same interests in music, television, politics and other subcategories of pop culture. Pop culture gives us each our own "social currency"which is used to connect with other people. This social currency helps us achieve desired positive impressions among people who are important to us such as our family, friends, and coworkers.
There are negatives to pop culture as well. Pop culture can create negative social views from people who don't understand it. A good example of this is the Dungeons and Dragons craze in the 80's that led many parents believing that the game was some sort of devil-worshiping game simply because they didn't understand what was really going on. Another example is how a form of pop culture like social media, can ruin people's lives and promotes bullying and negative behavior. Jon Ronson did a TED talk about how one lady told an inappropriate joke on Twitter, and her life was ruined by it due to the backlash of people demanding she be fired and wishing harm to her.
Well put! with all of the positives of popular culture, I think that people tend to overlook the negative aspects of popular culture a bit. Like when you talked about the subject of Jon Ronson's TED talk. I don't think that she deserved all of the backlash that she received from her post, even though it was wrong. But people can get way to carried away on twitter.
ReplyDeleteBut social currency is definitely one of the positive aspects of popular culture though. If you can recognize the power of social currency and apply it in your everyday life, you find yourself better off than those who don't understand the concept of social currency.