I happen to love pop culture, and love discussing with others. It's not a must know in life, but I do enjoy it.
I stopped following a lot less non-essential pop culture type stuff since getting married, staring a career and having kids. I have a limited amount of time to take care of the things that matter.
Most of the time we do not even know what pop culture is today, it's not to 20 years later or so we find out. I only know facts about the 70,80, and 90's.
If it wasn't for my wife I would know a lot less about pop culture than I do. She's all about it, so I inherently learn by the trickle-down effect. Either she tells me and I pretend to care, or I absorb info that's coming out of my TV at night as I surf the Internet. Occassionally I'll thumb through some horrible magazine like US Weekly while I'm dropping the kids off at the pool. I'm certainly not as up on things as I was when I was younger, but I know enough to be dangerous.
I haven't paid much attention to pop culture... ever. Closest I've come probably is in music, in that I had some 'mainstream' heavy metal and alternative rock albums. (metallica, ozzy, tool... etc.) I don't recognize the vast majority of people on the covers of the magazines and tabloids at the check out line. I still don't know who Kim Kardasian (sp?) is ... other than she was married for a brief time and people cared about it for some inexplicable reason. I don't like Obama, but I was right there with him when he said he didn't know who Snookie was. (I googled it/her) Good for him. I listen to talk radio, not music. We cancelled cable television since we never watched it. Now our tv is used only to watch netflix movies and old television series that no one cares about anymore. We turn the tv on once or twice a week at most. I'm not sure how many employees work for the company that employs me... but I would only recognize about a half dozen of them. The vast majority of them wouldn't recognize me at all, nor would I recognize them. We've never met as far as I know. ....so I don't have to worry about small talk. Communication is via fax or email and it's all business. When I hang with my friends we talk about hunting, archery, guns, bowfishing, politics, farming, etc. but I can't think of any pop-culture talk. I guess my friends are as backwards as I am.
This. I do stay current with technological trends to an extent (minus the apple cult). Then again, that's part of my job.
When you start becoming REALLY successful in terms of money as defined by today's culture... you don't have time to follow pop culture.
I was actually thinking about this the other day. There's what we could call a transition age between, well to be blunt - young and old. I'm not going to say numbers because I don't want to tick people off, but everyone in their own mind has their opinions of what young and old are. So the question I was wondering is - do the people in that transitional age (mainly 30's, ok I said a number...) follow pop culture because they feel if they don't, then they are "giving in" to getting old? The reason I was thinking this is because I think I am guilty of it. I'm 37 and the other day I was listening to pandora radio on the hard rock channel thinking how I don't enjoy it like I used to, then was forced to ask myself why the heck am I listening to it? The same can apply to many things in pop culture.
I would say a little bit. I'm not up on the "reality" shows, other than what's on Discovery. I believe it matters more to the younger generations, who are still forming opinions and wondering what's out in the world. As on gets older, it matters less. Though, I think that age is getting higher when people begin not to care. Lots of people would rather have their mind numbed than go out and actually live life. I do find some of the responses funny on here. Throw a picture of a hot actress on here and I bet 95% of the guys who say they don't follow pop culture will know who she is.....and probably have a couple comments as well.
This was pop culture back in the day for some of you boys. Fitting, isn't it? [video=youtube_share;LB5YkmjalDg]http://youtu.be/LB5YkmjalDg[/video]
What is pop culture to some is a better question. To me reality tv has nothing to do with pop culture. To me it's about the gadgets we use, the lingo we use and what we wear at the time. Do I care today about what I wear? No, but I care about the gadets we use today. Social media is a part of pop culture today, BH.com is social media, so you are all taking part in some form of pop culture today. Even you TJF
