What is Pop Culture?
A paper for Writing 101 answering the question “What is pop culture?”.
What is Pop Culture?
What is pop culture? This question could be approached by breaking down the term into two parts, popular and culture. The word popular typically means “widespread”, “well-liked”, and “accepted”. On the other hand the word culture can commonly be defined as “civilization”, “society”, or “way of life”. When put together the term could be classified as a society’s widespread accepted way of life.
It has been established that pop culture is a broad term describing many widespread interests or likes within a majority of a society. Popular culture changes depending upon who you ask, where you are, or what time period you are in. This is because pop culture is a collection of attitudes and ideas that are accepted by a given population at any specific time. Over the years our pop culture has changed drastically as technology has advanced, life styles have changed, and personal expectations have grown.
The pop culture of the United States in this day and age may be summed up by things like reality television shows, hip-hop music, text messaging, Facebook, and designer clothing. All of these are things the majority of our society involves in their everyday lives. People are checking their Facebook, updating their Twitter status, and/or commenting their friends on Myspace multiple times a day. Teenagers are listening to “pop” music, or popular music, not necessarily what they like best but what people their age as a whole have decided is good. House holds across the United States are tuning into more television shows than ever before, watching reality shows like “Rock of Love”, “The Real World”, and “Survivor”. Communication has been simplified from talking in person or over the phone, to simply text messaging. Clothing styles have consistently changed through out time, and appearance might be more important today than it has ever been.
A society’s pop culture changes constantly and continuously. What is most accepted and well-liked today may not be accepted at all in the years to come.
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