Meme pressure bursts dam. Again.
Once again the pressure of pop-culture memes built up to the point where I decided to take an hour and try to discover what they were about. They were:
- What is going on with LeBron James that everyone keeps referencing?
- Who is Justin Bieber?
- What is Jersey Shore?
- What is significant about The Real Housewives of New Jersey? Isn’t that a reality show capitalizing on the success of a sitcom?
- Why should the magazine covers be talking about Sandra Bullock’s stress and sadness? What’s going on?
- What is a “Team Jacob” or a “Team Edward”?
Usually I’d put hyperlinks in there, but that would entail doing more than the absolute minimal amount of typing on this post, the purposes of which are to point out how (again) out-of-the-loop I am with pop culture, to (cautiously) ask for help, and to propose a question, yet unasked, at the end of this post.
A few quick notes:
Justin Bieber: I found his YouTube site first, then Wikipedia. Watching the lead video I thought “Holy shit white boy’s messed up.” He has to have been raised a sheltered Southern Baptist or Mormon or something. One cannot act this kind of dangerous naïveté. He will quickly learn that this industry, this imagery, and this lifestyle are not sleepover games, but by that point his life may be beyond salvaging. There have to be evil creeps taking advantage of this boy who are going to crumple him up and throw him away the first time he ends up in rehab. Shit. Watching a plane crash in slow-motion.
Teams Jacob/Edward: I’ve given up googling about this, because it seems that everyone expects one to understand about this already, but this — named after characters in the Twilight pulp serials that are now films, right? — represent … loyalties that are argued about / cheered over / debated in places including movie theaters, loudly, during the screenings, regarding who gets to win the heart/other-body-parts of the girl? This can’t be right, can it?
The question for the end — typing as quickly as I can here — is one that I have been utterly unable to answer. Why would anyone — anyone — care about this stuff? I’m not just being an affected jerk; I am literally baffled.
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July 8th, 2010 at 19h40
Some people like sports. Some people like shitty pop music. Some people like shitty reality tv. Some people like following the love lives of celebrities. Some people like shitty vampire novels. Are you asking… why people like what they like? Because “people are probably stupid” will sort of answer this question, but I think you already know that.
July 8th, 2010 at 19h52
Huh, @Dave, revision “on preview”. I was actually attempting to clarify my point in a response already.
The thought process has been intermingling with reflections on Denis Leary that I’ve been having for the last 24 hours, and which deserves a longer, more-careful post. My clarification began with a disclaimer that I know I like certain things, and think/write about them a lot. I really do know that.
My true point is this: The saturation of these memes is such that the “some people juggle geese” explanation seems insufficient. So does the “meme-gone-viral” explanation. Cannot the people involve see just how manufactured all of these are? Like, “Here ya go, care about this!”
Am I wrong, factually (for instance, the nascence of the Bieber thing looks legitimately grassroots)? Am I making a false dichotomy (as in, are the memes I propagate just as engineered)? Again, this may deserve a whole essay about these topics. Or a book characterizing the feedback loops that generate this runaway stuff, and the features that make them take off (gloss, schadenfreude, surprise value, contained conflict, whatever). Or, you know, a Ph.D. thesis. Not that I obsess much.
July 8th, 2010 at 19h56
Why would anyone — anyone — care about this stuff? → Are you asking… why people like what they like?
Upon reflection, my subtext seems to be “… when there are so many more important things to care about?” Isn’t everyone thrilled that I get to be the Grand Arbiter of what is worthy of attention and what is not? (I think my argument kinda breaks down, at least on this axis.)
July 8th, 2010 at 20h03
I know the answer to most of your questions (except the whole “Team….” thing)…and the fact is I don’t care. You know how much I like sports, but your brother had to call me to tell me which team LeBron is going to, because I don’t care.
But here’s the question: Do tabloid mags exist in order to “make people care” about this garbage or do some (many?) care enough that it justifies the existence of tabloids?
My guess is that it’s the later.
The “why” eludes me, too.
July 9th, 2010 at 09h27
Why would anyone — anyone — care about this stuff?
I know who Francis Bean Cobain is. I attended a memorial sing-along at Johnny Cash’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I smelled what The Rock was cookin’. I’ve moved zig (for great justice). I’ve dressed up as Brad Majors and been stripped down to my underwear. My roommate and I went through a period of several months where we would shout “THIRTEEN!” whenever we encountered one another. I’ve been dragged to more opening night showings of movies than I can count. I’ve memorized all the words to Rock Lobster, a song I don’t even like, just so I could sing it at inappropriate times. I was kicked out of a game store for loudly decrying a form of gaming that wasn’t my own. I threw things at the television when Crash won Best Picture. I mostly make movie references at night… Mostly. I was in a car that vastly exceeded the speed limit so that the person driving could be one of the first to listen to the new Pearl Jam album (alblum).
None of this, not one bit of it, is actually anything that is objectively worth the time and attention that I’ve given it. That’s ok. There’s nothing wrong with getting excited about things, even when those things are stupid.
I understand that the draw of mass media is mystifying. I watch a grand total of three hours of television a week, a full third of which is watched on DVD (which is to say, old TV with no commercials). I can’t remember the last time I listened to the radio. I don’t follow any celebrities on Twitter, or belong to any Facebook “fan” groups. I don’t have the time, and I don’t have the inclination.
But I remember the teenager who listened to Dummy in a dark room over and over and over, who called into a local radio show to ask Neil Gaiman about comic book characters, who spent countless hours trawling the internet in search of theories about the Cigarette Smoking Man. I remember him caring, even about things that didn’t really matter all that much.
There are days when I really miss that kid.
July 9th, 2010 at 09h47
I’ve been dragged to more opening night showings of movies than I can count.
I was kicked out of a game store for loudly decrying a form of gaming that wasn’t my own.
I mostly make movie references at night… Mostly.
I was in a car that vastly exceeded the speed limit so that the person driving could be one of the first to listen to the new Pearl Jam album (alblum).
→ There are days when I really miss that kid.
You and me both, dude. Being able to fit all those in-jokes about our misspent youth into one paragraph is legendary. No one else will get it, but even so, I can think of only one arrestable offense in what you listed. (You could have made the paragraph longer — people have, after all, bothered to explain to you the concept of “bigger” — but I might have walked away in my boots [which is what they were made for] which would have left you unsupervised to go drive through a hospital parking lot the wrong way in order to shoot Tori Amos’ husband in the head. Via the KFC parking lot. So: clever girl!)
Now if only you still had that effing picture documenting our excursion to that hardcore-rebellious-indie place in Santa Monica. Awesome hobos, awesome Soviet surf rock; just avoid the Johnny Rocket’s.
I don’t have the time
Yeah you do. You’d just have to take it away from your other, more worthwhile pursuits (WTF?)
I understand that the draw of mass media is mystifying.
And that is my point. It’s because all the stuff we obsessed about as teens, no one had ever heard of — as illustrated by your list that includes Nirvana, The X-Files, Magic: The Gathering, James Cameron movies, Pearl Jam, and so on. Wait, what?
But I remember the teenager who listened to Dummy in a dark room over and over and over
Portishead’s Dummy?
July 9th, 2010 at 09h58
Yeah, Portishead. I really did listen to that album over and over again. Not as much as some other albums, of course, but I figured that I’d leave Under the Pink out of the conversation for now, if only to prevent my license to own a penis from being revoked.
July 9th, 2010 at 16h56
Yeah, Portishead.
Their second (self-titled) is such a better record, though. And you were still a teen then.
July 13th, 2010 at 10h16
Their second (self-titled) is such a better record, though.
Granted, but all of my music at that age was second-hand from friends/girlfriends/friends-that-I-wished-were-girlfriends. I wasn’t given Portishead; I was given Dummy.
And you were still a teen then.
For a lot of people, life is high school writ large. Also, if I’m being honest, I do still get as obsessive about useless commercial culture every now and then. I’m on the verge of becoming completely intolerable to Emma, as I’ve listened to the same song probably somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty times in the last 48 hours. She’s very patient with me, but her patience is wearing thin.