Its Time to Pay Attention

 I once had a humanities professor in college who said something that has stuck with me for a very long time: "The more you know, the funnier life is."

As I continued through my college courses and then graduation I slowly realized what he meant. The more knowledge one gains and the more attention one pays to the world around them, the more it starts to make sense, and many more jokes or quips from peers or characters in television and movies are less likely to go completely unnoticed. In effect, one can avoid being left out of the societal conversation.

Chuck Klosterman perfectly illustrated this concept in his article for Esquire. Most of his argument centers around the possible effects of missing out on or ignoring a piece of popular culture. His example was of the popularity of the Harry Potter books. At one point he says “Over time, these novels (and whatever ideas lie within them) will come to represent the mainstream ethos of our future popular culture.” The influence these books have on their teenage fanbase will eventually bleed out into how the fanbase behaves in and participates in society as they grow older. I gathered that the most problematic effect of ignoring popular culture in the present will be the lack of understanding of society in the future.

Popular culture is popular because people find something in it that they identify with and find others who identify with the same thing. Inadvertently, these people end up forming cultural beliefs that then spill over into the way they decide to participate in society. The more we pay attention to the fads and popular culture around us today, the better we will be able to understand tomorrow. However, one question remains: is it always worth it?

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