Consumed by Media

Throughout my life I have always followed and kept up with popular culture. My view was that pop culture was anything trending on all media. I know and keep up with trends mostly by keeping up with the news. This is extremely easy to today because of the way social media connects us with text. I can follow BBC news on Twitter and scroll through what has happened in the US and rest of the world and I can do something as small as follow a fashion blog to reassure me that Doc Martens are in fact back in style- as is the 90’s grunge look as a whole.

Before reading Storey’s article I did not take into consideration that popular culture could be divided into so many sectors and cause me to really think about the amount of information I consume. I now realize that much of the culture I experience is mass culture. We are surrounded by it; passing multiple McDonalds’ on the way to class while thoughtlessly checking Instagram and hearing Pharrell’s Happy for the fifteenth time, hating it, knowing every word but ultimately accepting it and singing along.

I think that this is the way that a lot of popular culture and media we experience is like. Mass culture is built to surround us and create a fantasy-like atmosphere we subconsciously agree with whether we truly like it or not.