This dates to a meatspace conversation I had last night with Jester.
I really don’t like pop culture. Especially the memes that seep into daily conversation, like stupid lines from movies produced and starring former castmembers of Saturday Night Live (Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Chris Farley, Jim Brewer, etc.). I’m just really sick of it. It gets repetitive.
And Jester is saying I shouldn’t complain, since I can’t identify these references. Well fuck you Jester!. I don’t like pop culture. It’s primitive, stupid, and degrading. Now leave me alone!
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by SpinneZiege *
This dates to a meatspace conversation I had last night
Especially the memes that seep into daily conversation
I don’t like pop culture. It’s primitive, stupid, and degrading.
[QUOTE]
It must be tough being so…hip in a world filled with squares. :rolleyes:
I’m with you on the fact that a lot of what passes for ‘popular’ these days sucks donkey balls, but you might turn down the pretentiousness meter a notch or three if you want to convince anyone else of that fact.
I gotta ask, if you can’t identify the sources for these pop-culture references, how do you know they come from Adam Sandler movies? Maybe they’re qouting Norman Lear, or Salman Rushdie. Okay, not likely, but it seems unfair to criticize something whose origins (and hence, meaning) you are unfamiliar with.
Pop culture has always been around, we just didn’t have a name for it until our relentlessly self-analyzing 20th century. Society naturally filters out the crap. Look at the Elizabethans: Shakespeare is remembered forever and ever, bear-baiting is happily forgotten. Both were pop culture in their day. Same thing will happen with our pop culture. Adam Sandler will consigned to the ashbin of history; The Simpsons will have their own wing in the Louvre.
Ouch. That hurts, in a really non-painful sort of way. Besides, Spinnie, saying “fuck” for emphasis is so over-used. :rolleyes:
I guess I should clear some things up, though. I never said that you couldn’t bitch about pop culture, I just said that, unless you can matter-of-factly state what you’re talking about, people ain’t gonna take you too serioiusly.
Case in point: if somebody makes a quote from Tommy Boy, and you say “God, Adam Sandler quotes, and thus all of pop culture, are soooo overused and stupid,” the teller of said quote will merely laugh at you, and not consider your point, since it’s a Chris Farley quote. True, that doesn’t matter in the long run, but it’s gonna be a bitch trying to get that person to take you seriously again.
I think you definitely need to give your definition of “pop culture,” before you do anything. As Nimune pointed out, The Simpsons is a bit of a different breed than Sandler, but they are quite definitely pop culture. Likewise, Dylan songs, despite how much meaning they have, are, to an extent, pop culture.
Telling all of pop culture to get bent is, in a sense, rebelling against that whole free will, self-expression thing. Might wanna narrow your borders before you piss alot of people off.
Seriously, though, when bitching about pop culture, you’re including things such as Harry Potter, the aformentioned Simpsons, the overwhelming majority of science fiction, and a metric shitload of good movies and music. The fact that the term generally includes items of more questionable worth (Britney, boy bands, etc.) doesn’t necessarily validate your case.
One must ask if you even know what pop culture means. It’s short for popular culture. “Pop culture” is a popular slang from that phrase. So you’re using pop culture while denouncing it. heh.
But if I understand you correctly, you don’t like pop culture. So, you don’t like anything popular. By making this rant, you’re hoping us to be swayed by your logic and moved to hate popular things as well. In other words, you want it to be popular for pop culture to be unpopular. My head swirles.
So I must now conclude one of three things
You haven’t clearly defined your stance in your OP
You were being sarcastic
You haven’t quite thought this all the way out yet.
Star Destroyers (y’know, those huge, ominous, triangular starships loaded with weaponry and TIE fighters) have entered Popular Culture, but how can they NOT be cool?
Now, I can’t understand how a lot of stuff can be popular, truth to tell. Britney Spears? Why oh why oh WHY?!? N’Sync? G’huh?!? McDonald’s? WTF?!?
But writing off all the funny/cool shit in the world just because a lot of people like SOME pretty stupid stuff is quite a hasty generalization, don’tcha think?
Ender: I’m doing this in the Pit and not in GD. I’m just blowing off some steam. Jester & I have been doing this for a while. It was only inevitable it would reach the boards.
Guin: MST3K I think goes into the ‘cult’ status, as it’s been cancelled for a while now and is still worshipped.
schief: I’m using terms I read in obscure sci-fi magazines and novels that hardly anyone has read. It ain’t pop culture; it’s geek culture. (Also, the 90’s are over, along with Silicon Valley. Don’t coutner me with “geek is pop” arguments. They’ve had their time.)
Uhmmmm…Spinnie? Just a hint: bringing IRL conversations to the boards without any real reason isn’t the best idea (especially if said conversations were with me). Because unless you are trying to bring people over to the anti-pop side, this thread is just taking up space.
Nope, no good. MST3K is still in syndication, and gets Sci-Fi some of its best ratings. Even if it is cult, though, that’s still just a branch offa the pop culture tree. This would also be a good time to point out again that “The Simpsons” are most definitely an example of pop culture, alive and kicking. What’s your stance on them?
Ah, yes, but the “welcome to the new millenium, the 90s are dead” stigma is, guess what, popular nowadays. Thus, pop culture. You still haven’t defined what the Hell you’re talking about.
I read the OP as objecting primarily to referential humor associated with popular culture, not pop culture itself. (Assuming of course that we ignore the thread title.) This seems (to me) to encompass a spectrum ranging from Saturday Night Live and bad Adam Sandler movies to the Simpsons, Seinfeld, and MST3K. On the left side of the spectrum (SNL, etc.), you have jokes which aren’t funny at all on their own, but become funny with repetition. On the right side, you have jokes which were hilarious on their own, and with the right timing and situation can be even funnier referentially, IMO.
My guess is that SpinneZiege really just wanted to complain about the left side of that referential spectrum. If that is the case, then I can see where he’s coming from, even if I don’t personally share his view. Some people can’t enjoy a joke they know came from an objectionable source, and get tired of being bombarded with it.
Sadly, though, that’s just the way it is. I think it’s kind of lame to complain about it, but whatever floats your boat.
For no real reason, I will now close with my favorite Seinfeld quote:
I was going to say that! Damn. You posted that five minutes after he did…
Anyway Spinnie, you can’t say fuck you to Jester. He is my homie. So to speak.
Besides, sure some pop culture sucks but there are other on-sucking aspects to this field. If i may, i’ll utilize an SNL analogy. There have been some great sketches and actors on SNL…Phil Hartman, Wayne’s World, Deep Thoughts, Jimmy Fallon (::sigh::), as well as many not good ones…(IMHO!), Superstar, Adam Sandler, etcetera. And yeah its all opinion, really. You have to take the good with the bad.
Perhaps what the OP may have been trying to say is not that pop culture is bad, but that often everyday conversations are infused with snippets of pop references. Not that there’s anything wrong with repetition, but man, sometimes I begin to wonder if some people have anything of their own to say, or if they are just walking casette recorders playing back lines from Simpsons/Seinfeld/whatever. Whatever happened to original thought? Sometimes I feel like asking myself, “how much more unoriginal could we be?” And the answer is none, none more unoriginal. Not that there’s anything wrong with repetition.
