Delaney Kerr - Is Pop Culture Bad for You?

        Dive deep into the jungle of media that bombards the average first-world person in the modern age, and one will find themselves lost in a labyrinth of movies and television series that they have never heard of, cutting the vines of dead social media platforms with a machete, filing through exclusively bad news and meaningless attempts at revolution, jumping over chasms that lead to a deep pit of miseducation, and running from the online arguments and altercations that so grip people who have found themselves too lost in the maze of popular culture. To give this web credit, there are positives to creating networks of loosely interconnected people, and there are educational television and media programs, but the dangers of getting lost in the darker sections of popular culture far outweigh the current benefits. 

        To begin, popular culture creates a normative atmosphere in which people much more liberally provide their opinions, which tend to be much more harsh, than they ever would in a real-life situation. This freedom can be a good thing, as it allows people who enjoy similar hobbies to interact with one another. However, popular culture also reeks of body-shaming, the idealization of having immense wealth that is unobtainable for the vast majority of people, and a goal to be popular amongst the masses. In Phil Miller's Ted Talk about why popular culture is dying as we know it, he gives an example from a study that asked children in the United Kingdom under ten, to list the ten best things in the world. Miller states that: "number three [is] being rich, number two [is] good looks, and number one [is] being a celebrity" (TED 2015). In the world of popular culture that has been created in the modern day, the easiest way to be deemed as interesting is to be conventionally attractive, rich, or popular, and children are catching onto this fact. This can lead both children and adults alike down a deep rabbit hole of  feeling like they are not interesting, cool, or pretty enough to be loved or cared for. Internal issues such as these create self image problems, and external problems, such as bullying, are created through the normalization of feeling less-than for not looking like a super model on social media. Alexander Phillipe attempts to counter this argument stating that: "[pop culture] is part of our fabric as human beings. It says something about us, about our better nature" (TED 2013). However, this argument assumes that people are innately inclined to be kind to one another, which is obviously not true. Overall, popular culture enables an air of ignorance and self-hatred, and it is actively being directly marketed to the youngest generation of children in society today, and is the exact opposite of healthy or good for society. 

        In addition, popular culture creates a false sense of security in the knowledge and connections made over the internet. One of the perceived benefits of popular culture is the way that information is spread quickly. In theory, this is an immense positive, as many people will have access to information. In practice, however, it is clear that this attribute is often abused, and misinformation is quickly spread. Steven Johnson's article: "Watching TV Makes you Smarter" (2005) attempts to debunk the idea that popular culture, particularly television, is bad for viewers. Although this argument can be made, he quite literally proves his own argument wrong throughout his article, by providing faulty charts and evidence. For example, he uses his first unlabeled chart to show "individual threads" against "time" (p. 281), but does not explain his sources in creating this chart, and assumes the reader will inherently believe that his work is correct without fact checking him. Thus, intrinsically showing the ease in which miseducation and falsehoods can be spread throughout the world. Popular culture also allows for faulty information to be spread, through the use of loose connections and the ability to hide behind a screen. In Malcolm Gladwell's article, "Small Changes: Why the Revolution will not be Tweeted" (2010), Gladwell explains that social media is "built around weak ties" (p. 319). These are connections that are established, but do not truly exist. Weak tie connections have little reliability, and cannot be called on in times of need. However, many people believe that internet friends are real friends, thus establishing a falsity in the way humans perceive relationships. 

        Based on the analysis of the ways in which humans interact with popular culture, it is clear to see that media is based on a deep well of lies, and causes an overall net negative impact on the world, rather than a positive one.