Popular Culture

Well apart from his good points it's also simply bad. If you can sit through a Marvel blockbuster without feeling guilty or thinking "this is really quite stupid" then you're nothing more than a trained monkey and can't complain people don't like your "culture".

Immediate things are simply untrue and should be used merely as a tool to get to what is universal and rational.

I enjoy it. I watch tv shows and go to movies and shit.

popular culture is not only marvel/dc, it's also mad max and matrix for instance

also you fedorians don't know the notion of entertainment, guilty pleasure and, above all, FUN.
You are trained monkeys who train so hard to be entertained by boredom.

I can smell your vagina from here.

t. etre masculine ici
nevertheless, I can smell teenage virginity from your post. If we are supposed to exchange arguments ad personam and ad hominem, better luck next time.

Worrying about 'fun' and 'relaxing' or whatever you want to call it are typical feminine characteristics, a man should worry about what is right, and the right thing in the case of the hobby this board champions is the truth and eternal, or at least the closest we can to it.

can get*

You got bamboozled by memes and their definition of masculinity which comes from 19th century at least.

Because it caters to the majority, the average man and woman. These average people are getting dumber and lazier as time passes, they look for quick gratification and go out of their way not to do anything mentally challenging in their freetime. If something caters to these people, it's quality worsens over time. The dumber the people, the worse their culture.

Reading can be fun. Writing can be fun. Thinking can be fun. Shit, they were considered fun less than 60 years ago. It doesn't matter if you'd rather contemplate the meaning of a penis in Fight Club instead of reading a book. That's your idea of fun, formed by your upbringing and local culture. Under different circumstances, you'd consider other things to be the pinnacle of entertainment. It doesn't have to be something "muh fedora is Veeky Forums"-ish, it could be watching pigs, counting trees or some other shit.

If being a man today means being a mindless numale playing with his tech toys then I reject it.

Either way, masculinity is not something that merely is and changes with time, the assertiveness and leadership that comes with it is something that is simply demanded, regardless of such and such period of time thinks.

I dislike many things that are popular, but I don't just automatically hate whatever is popular because I'm not some insecure try hard.

>These average people are getting dumber and lazier as time passes

just like Veeky Forums

masculinity is about free choice, first of all

>>These average people are getting dumber and lazier as time passes
You mean just like in all humans, woa

>guilty pleasure

I don't feel guilty at all for liking Sven Hassel, Rambo or John Carpenter's music. If you do feel guilty you should reconsider your station in life user.

The line between high culture and pop culture is not a clear one, so when arguing whether pop culture is good or bad, it's useful to take an example that is undoubtedly pop culture.
Take your example of Mad Max - the original was quite niche while the last installment has all the CGI, feminist undertones and marketing budget that normie popculture needs and while it was entertaining, it gave you nothing in terms of thought or emotion.

I addressed guilty pleasure, and the term guilty pleasure implies that you already know what you're enjoying is shit on some level.

In short, not everything that's popular is shit but if something is wildly popular, it's likely not worth much.

I won't join the other discussion, let the lefties think that deconstructing masculinity into "you're just as much of a man if fap to MLP" is just fine.

it's a fucking linguistic construction, you fucking retard

It really isn't tho. Guilty pleasure implies a measure of shame in liking what you like. You either like something or you don't idiot, no matter the reasons.

That's a characteristic of everyone living in a democracy, but not of men exclusively.

That was a pretty good spider-man cartoon, if I don't say so myself.

I like plenty of pop culture. From an anthropological or historical perspective it comprises a fascinating reflection of the culture that produced it, and aesthetically plebty of it is actually quite rewarding. Something like the original Star Wars trilogy is probably the finest piece of mythic storytelling of the 20th century.

L'enfer c'est les autres. You should have known that at least. Otherwise you are a child with down syndrome, who sees the world only as black and white, 0 or 1.

I don't mind popular culture but I hate the glorification of it and how much it has ruined a lot culturally. I like it fair enough as entertainment but you know something is wrong with people when they start worshiping it as nothing more than that.

this

It is meant to be consumed by the lowest common denominator, and so it is made up of base and lowbrow ideas and desires.

Everybody likes pop culture. Anybody who says otherwise is a deluded idiot who pretends they're better than the "masses."

Modern society has commodified literally everything. Everything has been reduced to images. To escape popular culture is to escape society itself. Not only is that impossible, its a fool's errand.

fuck off, tryhard. you aren't impressing anybody

Disregarding something to disassociate with a group is just as cringeworthy and mindless as the people you are criticizing.

and remind me why I wrote this

>It is meant to be consumed by the lowest common denominator, and so it is made up of base and lowbrow ideas and desires.

It's meant to be consumed by the average populace. And about half of the average populace simply consumes pop culture as a tool to facilitate relationships with other people.

But of course you wouldn't know about that.

You stop getting that when yoy graduate from high school and stop associating with shitty people.

I haven't heard anybody associate with the cringey "so random nerd that loves Superheroes" thing since this girl i used to hook up with my sophomore year of college becaise she had blue hair and daddy issues.

I don't hate popular culture per se.

If a piece of popular media speaks to me in a specific or personal way, I won't turn away from it. But popular media is produced very deliberately in a way that makes sure it doesn't appeal to anyone in specific or personal ways.

So, I just don't understand why I would waste my time reading a piece of popular pop lit or watching a hollywood movie that anyone could enjoy, when I could instead read something that actually speaks to specific things about my human experience and might teach me some new things along the way.

Remember when scientists knew Latin or Greek?

I do dislike the overall 'Tumblr' cult around popular shows. For me, even though I am drawn into pop culture far too often, things like the first episode of season three of Sherlock shows how all there exists is a pandering to the fans. Other shows, like Big Bang Theory, simply become a masturbatory reference machine; things are becoming vacuous and simply self-perpetuate those empty lines, names, and whatnot.

Now, ultimately, what's the difference with that and with Dante? I think it boils down to the fact that Dante can actually feed your soul better.

It's strange when you now have priests dissecting Harry Potter for religious lessons.

I guess, we are accounting for taste, and some tastes ought to be higher than others. As Veeky Forums members, we dislike pop culture because it is not as 'patrician' as our tastes.

As a Classicist, yes.

>Dante can actually feed your soul better
the "soul" part is sooo arbitrary

Things I don't like about pop culture:
1) It is generally of a lower quality. Not always, but often. It is built for immediate satisfaction. The old analogy is pop culture is to McDonalds what high culture is to a nice restaurant. A bit of a cliche at this point but I think it's valid.
2) I dislike the people who mindlessly enjoy it.
3) I dislike the people who think about it on a deeper level, but only superficially. It makes me sad because their time could be better spent elsewhere.
4) I dislike, to a certain extent, the cultural relativism that seems to go hand in hand with people passionate about pop culture. I've read my post-modern theory, I know why the line between high and low culture has blurred. That being said, I have no time for people who ignore the classics (be it literature, cinema) for easily consumable entertainment and then grandstand by implying a Marvel movie could elevate your life in any close to that of a masterpiece by (insert name of great director here).

I don't like anything, so I don't like popular culture either.

I guess what I posted was more of a complaint on a specific asoect of 'nerd culture' than pop culture. But I've been waiting to complain about the Skywalker-monkey for a months now.
Honestly, cringey fanbases probably wouldn't deter me from enjoying a thing but I would at all cost avoid being associated with them.

Part of my anger probably comes from some form of elitism.
>why are you announcing your cringy obsession publicly whilst my superior hobbies and taste go unnoticed?
Probably something about not getting enough pussy

Yeah I agree mostly dude

People who compare pop culture to McDonald's are wrong. It's more like tap water.

And if you can get excited about tap water, that's your problem. If I can't get excited about tap water, that's not my problem.

I feel that working through the poem itself tries to educate individuals on the notions of sins, punishment, redemption, God, the cosmos, and, on top of it all, primes you with names in the canon so you can do additional research.

Books are like firecrackers, they explode in your hands; each finished books encourages you to read others similar, in reference, and in theme. Dante is a nuclear bomb.

That's also the danger of pop culture; you begin to desire all those other references; you want to feel part of the in-group; you want to understand the head nod.

how can I fully appreciate Dante not being a student of italian philology

You can't and neither can anyone else. Most people who read it have no idea what they're looking at.