About Pop Culture

Popular culture (also called pop culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of the practices, beliefs and objects that are dominant or ubiquitous in a society at a given point in time. Popular culture also encompasses the activities and feelings produced as a result of interaction with these dominant objects. Heavily influenced in modern times by mass media, this collection of ideas permeates the everyday lives of people in a given society. Therefore, popular culture has a way of influencing an individual's attitudes towards certain topics (McGaha, 2005). According to author John Storey, there are various definitions of popular culture (Storey, 2006). 

Popular culture is everywhere and very easy to be access. You know it when you access the Internet, listen to music, watch television shows, app-gaming or going to a movie, concert or a stage show. You know the artists, the actors and actresses, sports personalities and the games/sports they play. Today, anything with a buzz is deemed pop culture. The book definition says pop culture is a collection of thoughts, ideas, attitudes, perspectives, images (you name it) preferred by the mainstream population. A sort of common denominator.

Each one of us has our own pop culture menu. Look at your apps, your bookmarks, your songs playlist, TV shows, and movies: what you're saying on your favorite social net. Smartphones today are the center of your pop culture. For example, you like K-Pops and Korean dramas, you can be said as you like their pop culture.

A pop culture, however, will be a bit restricted to only their modern or 1950s and above culture that emerges from a country or a community. The culture before it may be considered as their heritage culture or only as a part of those that shape their pop culture.

The term "pop culture" became mainstream during the 1980's. Before this, we used "popular" to describe things such as, top song playlists or "pop" as in art or "best" or "top" selling, as in books. So it can also be seen as “Pop” in “pop culture” is actually the short of “popular”. This shows how popular cultures or the popular sides of a community or a country that you so much adores. Pop culture encompasses all that is prominent in society at a particular period of time. It influences the interaction between people in everyday activities.

Slangs such as 'going viral' 'selfies' are used by the teens and tweens. Needless to say that the smart phone with- the apps, bookmarks, favourites, playlists - have become the pop culture of the 21st century. This technology enabled culture demands speed. Instant friending, upvotes, likes and similar such validation on the social media. It becomes important that everything is made public. Life events, celebrations are posted, uploaded on facebook, instagram. Individuals use twitter to express opinion on popular issues and make their voice heard. This way, the pop culture will be very much shared and could easily influence others by an easy means, via internet. The pop culture will knowingly or unknowingly shape our everday interaction with others.

So, like it or not, pop culture will always be there around us. Pop culture will also be inside our very heart and on our interactions. Thus, knowing about pop culture will definitely spice up our life.

            DAFI MUHAMMAD IZZANI

1806240694