Pop Culture Engagement Is Not Mandatory

I went and ate ice cream yesterday, I finished something at work, and the plan is to get a haircut today. Also, did you know that AmTrak has vacation packages? Just an observation.

Not sure what I’m reading today, but I just finished the third Sisters Grimm novel. Might I be able to convince my dad to go watch Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die in the theater? Perhaps not this weekend, what with it being Valentine’s Weekend and all, and I suspect the theater might be full…

Anyhow, Lent is coming next week! Be ready!

Pop Culture Engagement Is Not Mandatory

You guys do know that, if a piece of media or entertainment is bad, or you strongly suspect it will be, you don’t have to interact with it?

Sorry, I know that I’ve probably written about this sort of thing before, but I am struck by how, these days, people can’t help it. There was a halftime show for the Super Bowl, and people who already knew they weren’t going to like it for this or that reason, declared how it’s proof of everything they hated in society. And like, yeah, you’re allowed to critique things, but it seems sometimes people are getting mad about random things because they have picked a Side in the Culture War, rather than because they’re seriously engaging with a piece of media to critique it.

Because guess what? You don’t have to do this! You don’t have to watch every viral clip or movie or show to have A Take! You don’t have to read a book because everyone else is reading it! The world doesn’t work like that! Unless you’re working on the salvation of someone’s soul, or something like that, you can just… leave it alone! It’s fine!

I remember, for instance, that one of the people in my Trivia Group was stunned to find out that I hadn’t heard the song “Baby Shark”. “You have to hear it!” she declared, and started pulling it up on her phone. Why? I don’t know. I don’t care. I had gone years without hearing a song that apparently most adults found annoying, so I don’t know why I would go out of my way to look at it right now.

Likewise, I recall when there was some BS controversy about a commercial on Hallmark, or something? It had a lesbian couple, I think, and people raised a ruckus because… Reasons. I remember one of my colleagues on ImpishIdea, in the middle of a sporking, embedded the commercial’s YouTube link in there, and dared anyone to start a fight over it. It didn’t have anything to do with the topic of his essay (critiquing Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments). He just wanted to make sure you knew where he stood on the grand cultural issue of a TV commercial’s place on television.

And do you remember how many people read Fifty Shades of Grey “just to see what it was about”? They evidently couldn’t figure out that the erotica book was trash through context, and the author being an idiot in public. No, they had to sit and read it, so they could proclaim whether or not it was good for society or not.

Pop culture is not mandatory, guys. If you’re a critic, then yes, it makes sense that you’re going and reading or watching things that you don’t think are good. That’s the point of your occupation, after all. And if you’re doing it for entertainment value, like in a sporking, then yeah, you’re going to engage with these things because that’s the point. You have to go over the top to entertain people.

But if you don’t have this excuse, you don’t need to comment on everything that becomes A Thing in pop culture. So many of the people commenting this or that on the Bad Bunny halftime show: did you actually come to that conclusion on your own? Or are you mad because you’ve been told that you should be? Over something that you knew you wouldn’t like to begin with (probably for BS reasons)? Oh no! The culture is obsessed with something I find offensive! Well, that’s just life these days, get over it.

I don’t watch football! I don’t listen to Bad Bunny! It’s not a moral stance, I just don’t care! Please shut up!

Critique has its place, of course, but things are just plain ridiculous nowadays. You don’t need to comment on every single thing because other people are talking about it, because of Culture War nonsense.

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