Pop Culture

Pop culture influences society in both negative and positive ways. The negative influences of pop culture perpetuates vanity and shallowness, while the  positive encourages unity and greatness. Before I dive into the why let me first give you my definition of pop culture. Ill break it down word by word starting with pop, or should I say popular. Popular means that everyone knows or wants to know about a particular event, and now on to the word culture. Culture is a group of people coming together regularly based on something they all, at least in this scenario, know about and discussing it. When I combine these words I get the following definition; pop culture or popular culture is anything that the majority of people in neighboring areas take an interest in and discuss among each other. Now that we have a definition, well at least my definition, I can further explain how pop culture perpetuates vanity and shallowness. Currently on social media there is a trending obsession with hash tags and hash tag challenges. These challenges can be both negative and positive. Lets take the seemingly innocent hash tag challenge #dontjudgeme, which is supposed to be positive but instead promotes vanity and shallowness. In this challenge you draw things that society deems as ugly, such as a uni-brow and acne. Then you wipe some sort of cream on the spots you just drew on and cover the camera and pose in the after picture with full make-up applied and stare into the camera while blowing kisses. This doesn't make me think "wow I should not judge that guy or girl based on their outside appearance." It makes me think that this person really just wanted a reason to put on makeup and look at themselves. It makes me think that people are mocking and laughing at those individuals who don't have to draw on their uni-brow and acne. Challenges like this one thrive on the humiliation of some and the vanity of others . Now on the other hand we have the positive challenges like the ALSicebucketchallenge. This challenge is not only fun, but it also doesn't mimic or mock anyone who does have ALS. It helped raise funds for research , which in turn did lead to a medical breakthrough.  This is where the positive influence of pop culture on society  comes in. Hashtags like #blacklivesmatter, #alsicebucketchallenge,#blackgirlmagic, #23ways, and many more show that there is strength in numbers and through hard work and determination the US could be great once more, but that is a whole 'nother topic.

PS: I think a good name for this blog could be Streams of Overlapping Brainwork for short SOB haha