Pop Cult Hipster

Shades of the Pop Cult

The "I f***ing love science!" crowd gets short shrift around here, but one of their favorite boutique mantras may have some truth behind it. Time does indeed seem like it must be subjective sometimes. Case in point: It's now been ten years since the consumer revolts of the 2010s promised…
August 7, 202311 Comments
strong female character

Decoding the Amazon

Author J. Ishiro Finney decodes the Strong Female Character™ trope in his new book Boobs of Steel: Decoding the Amazon. Lara Croft... Power Girl... Tifa Lockhart... They're three of the most loved and loathed characters in all pop-culture. Since the late 1990s all three have also been favorite targets for…
July 31, 20233 Comments
participant

No Participation Trophies

If you spent any length of time on social media this weekend, you couldn't escape seeing culture warrior Conservatives backsliding into the Pop Cult slop funnel en masse. Many of the same people who lamented the outrage marketing that turned Captain Marvel from a near-flop to a billion-dollar hit fell…
July 25, 20237 Comments
Scott Pilgrim Subculture

Subcultural Experiences

Commenter Hermetic Seal writes: As someone who started college in the mid-2000s, a big part of my experience was how all of my communal activities, and the entertainment I was into, moved from shared cultural experiences, to subcultural ones. I think a lot of that emerged naturally, or subconsciously, in…
July 20, 20233 Comments
Tower Records

Gen Y Tales: Welcome to Adulthood

A reader writes in to share a Gen Y tale of his own: It was 2005 and I had just turned 18. I was at a Tower Records with a bunch of high school friends. It was a neat, two story place and that particular night it was lively and…
July 19, 202316 Comments
Higher Ed Confidence

Seminaries of the Death Cult

Americans' confidence in institutions of higher learning has hit an all-time low according to a new Gallup poll. Americans’ confidence in higher education has fallen to 36%, sharply lower than in two prior readings in 2015 (57%) and 2018 (48%). In addition to the 17% of U.S. adults who have…
July 13, 20234 Comments
The Tangled Web of Tony Pellicano

The Tangled Web of Tony Pellicano

Hollywood has its own intrigues that rival international espionage, as this writer learned while pulling a thread left in yesterday's comments by author JD Cowan. [Director John] McTiernan’s career is fascinating. Everything he did was fantastic until the 2000s hit and he got entangled with the feds after his producers…
July 12, 20231 Comment
Get a Life 1990

Get a Life

One unintended consequence of internet search algorithms' increasing uselessness for finding what you want is sometimes finding what you didn't know you wanted. For instance, the other day I was wrestling with YouTube in search of some obscure clip I was looking for. Instead, YT's search engine spat out some…
February 20, 20237 Comments
friendship2

The Friendless Generation

The sexual revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for men. And not just in the way your brain instantly sprang to. Sometime in the last 30 years, men pretty much stopped having friends. The real male retreat from society is husbands vanishing into man caves when not serving…
February 16, 20239 Comments
Watterson The Mysteries

Watterson’s Return

Almost thirty years after retiring his beloved comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, artist Bill Watterson returns with a strange new project. The Mysteries is a new 72-page book by Watterson and fellow artist John Kascht are creating what is described as "a fable for grown-ups." Scheduled to be published by…
February 15, 20232 Comments