I understand your post and it’s tongue in cheek sarcasm - but it actually lead me to think more seriously about the meaning of pop culture today vs when I was a teenager. I’m so old I remember being a teenager pre-internet. It was soooo different back then. There were far less options than there are now for everything.
Beer - Anything “fancy” was imported. There were very few options beyond major brewing companies besides Heinekin.
TV/Movies - There was 1 video chain that had offbeat/arthouse rentals - and they required a $50 deposit because many things they had (like Altered States) were so rare and hard to find. HBO just showed run of the mill box office stuff - no great original TV series.
Music - That was a little better - but you were dependent upon college radio DJ’s to get an introduction to anything new, cutting edge, not top 40 pop.
Sports - Before the internet I had to stay up till 3am to see any sumo wrestling.
Coffe - I remember when I was 16 or 17 reading about coffee shops that they had in Euorpe where people just sat around and drank various coffee drinks and had intellectual conversations - I thought it was the most amazing thing ever - we had nothing even remotely like this in the suburbs before Starbucks.
The list could go on and on - but I think if anyone who is 40 or older tries really hard to remember what it was like when they were younger, they would be amazed at how much more cultural diversity there is now in the US compared to then - almost to the point that it is hard to say what “pop” culture is any more.
Well in some ways it’s easy to avoid if you don’t watch TV news (or much TV at all) and listen to public or college radio. Good point though: it’s not as if we are provided with an unlimited variety of choices. At least Google News can be configured.
Yup, that’s another tradeoff. Also if you share living arrangements some of this stuff diffuses in.
I was in college in Boston in the mid 70s, and we used to go to Harvard Square in Cambridge for the hippest of hip experiences. This was just prior to the yuppie take over, and it actually still had a bohemian feel to it. Things change.
The latest coffee craze to hit the SF area is Philz. I went once just to see what the hype was about. It was, indeed, really good coffee, but at $4 a cup and you practically had to take semester course in ordering before you can get what you want, I probably won’t be back anytime soon. It’s a rat race trying to out-hip the hipsters…
I suppose it’s worthwhile to educate oneself about all the pop cultural icons and things, at least to the minimal extent necessary to know if there’s anything worthwhile to know about them. For example, I don’t follow movies much and don’t follow celebrity news much at all – so all I know about Leonardo DiCaprio is that he appears to be a gorgeously heartthrob for all the young female viewers, of whom Ed Zotti himself wrote in a movie review:
So suddenly, a celebrity article that looks worth clicking on!
ETA: OTOH, for example, I have yet to stumble upon anything about Justin Bieber that seems to make it worth knowing anything about him, although I have read bits and pieces to see if there might be something. Not seeing it yet. In a CS thread a while back, I asked “At least, can he sing? Does he have any, y’know, actual talent?” to which a number of posters responded, saying, yes, at least he can sing.
Similarly to my above comment, I made myself studiously unaware of all things Kardashian, until [del]Bruce[/del] Caitlin Jenner was in the news so much recently. Then I began seeing all the miscellaneous references (just in the headlines or thumbnail story teasers) of their close connections to each other, and with the O. J. Simpson trial (which I had also largely avoided paying much attention to). So it was worthwhile, I suppose, to read just enough to be aware of what that was all about, in summary.
TL;DR: The patriarch of the sisters Kardashian (which this spell-checker objects to on this line, but not in my first sentence above) is a big-name lawyer who was one of O. J. Simpson’s lawyers. And Bruce Jenner was married into the family somewhere along the way. That’s all I know or need to know about them, though.
Addressing the OP more than the drift of the replies - opting out is as effective as not-voting or ignoring whatever’s over a fence that you don’t like. It simply leaves the field or effort or control to someone else, and it’s very unlikely not to affect you, in the short or long run.
Opting out is saying “it’s not important enough to me to have any active opinion.” You’re just removing your vote from any possible change.
Staying “opted in” to something because it’s just too hard to opt out is worse, IMHO - the sociopolitical equivalent of staying in an abusive marriage. Your vote becomes a false affirmation of the situation.
Neither is a right choice, but I understand why those options tend to form an enormous plurality of individual choices.
One could make the same remarks (as in my previous post) about the Bible, for that matter. For the non-religious (or at least, non-Judeo-Christian-Muslim-religious), what does one need to know about it?
Well, Biblical ideas, even phrases and idioms and expressions, are suffused throughout Western culture. One hears Bible talk all over the place, even if one doesn’t recognize it.
One example: I never knew that the well-known phrase “Handwriting on the wall” was of Biblical origin (Book of Daniel) until, y’know, I actually read it there. And I had only a vague general notion of the story of Samson (legendary strong-man, hair is his source of power, gets seduced by enemy female and shaved in his sleep). I always thought that sounded like some Greek legend or myth, until I found out that it’s actually a Bible story and Samson was a Hebrew.
Can’t remember the least time I watched the network or local news, The Kardashans or any other “personality” TV, read a People or it’s ilk, watched one of the major team sports other than certain championships… I know I have bought Starbucks in my life, but can’t remember the last time. Ditto for McDs, BK, etc. Reading the paper, it is easy to skim over crap I’m not interested. And the people I spend time with spend very little time discussing popular “personality” culture.
I do my best not to buy crap I can’t afford or don’t need or REALLY want. I do discuss - and dislike - the extent to which so many aspects of our American (world?) culture seems focussed on the acquisition of disposable consumer goods, with no concern for the effects on the environment, the economy, public policy, etc. And American food production policy and eating habits are deplorable. But I’m not sure that’s exactly what the OP was getting at.
I don’t have to worry about this, since I can’t go on Jeopardy again.
It is easy to avoid this stuff. I listen to KCBS, KQED, and a classical station (a news station and NPR for non-Bay Area residents.) The Kardashians never come up. I don’t watch entertainment coverage. And I hardly watch anything not pre-recorded.
I don’t click on Kardashian links. I don’t care about Kardashian sex tapes. Avoiding them is easy. I’d probably never even know their names if comedy shows didn’t make fun of them.
On the one hand, when people who complain about how bad or stupid television is, I want to point out that you can turn the set off. You can even crush your set with a sledgehammer and throw the pieces in the garbage, to ensure that you’re never tempted to watch it again. Not watching television is not impossible. It does not make you a social outcast. It’s fairly easy to explain to other people, most of the time, that you don’t watch TV. Movie theaters are even easier to avoid. Dan Brown novels and other dumb crap are easy to not read.
On the other hand, some aspects of consumer culture are tougher to avoid. Tabloids, for instance, with their never-ending race to the bottom in taste, intelligence, and celebrity-worship. If you go to the supermarket, you can’t avoid them. Okay, so you can shop at Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods and avoid them that way. But we’re not talking about a trivial amount of effort any more.
Popular music. I can choose what to play in my own house. I can’t avoid what other people play on car stereos on the street, or what gets played over speakers in every store, restaurant, doctor’s waiting room, and so forth.
Or, less destructively, terminate your cable connection, watch TV programs on DVD (you’ll be a season or two behind, but no commercials!), and get news (and whatever pop culture you want to dabble in) off the Web.
That’s what we’ve done chez Firefly. The only time the Firebug sees a commercial is when he’s at someone else’s house.
ISTM that they’ve become less noticeable - at least, I notice them less. I’m guessing there are simply fewer of them anymore, now that people can get their fill of all things Kardashian online. I’ll probably be stopping by Food Lion on the way home tonight; I’ll have to see what they’ve got in the checkout line. But my recollection from a couple decades ago was that there’d be a wall of a half-dozen celebrity tabloids at the checkout line, but now I think you might see maybe two.
I think there’s more to the OP than whether or not you know any Kardashian’s first name or don’t/watch TV news. ITR Champion touched on it but got side-tracked into (IMHO) a trivial aspect.
Who here thinks they live a life “insulated from consumer culture” - somewhat, a lot, substantially or totally? I’m one of the more strenuous opponents of all that phrase represents, and have been for quite some time - formally, for close to a decade - and I’d be pushing it a bit to say I am more than “somewhat insulated.”
I don’t know if you were responding to me specifically, but I was using the Kardashians as a shorthand for all the celeb fluff news.
A lot. I don’t see TV ads (hell, I don’t watch much TV, even on DVD), and I listen to the radio in my car, where the next station is a push-button away when a commercial starts. Internet advertising is so misdirected in my case that it basically doesn’t apply.
Probably my main exposure to ads is my local hardware store’s twice-monthly circular. There are exceptions, but my consumer habits are largely driven by needs and wants arising from my actual living situation. That’s more or less the opposite of ‘consumer culture.’
