Why do people read, watch, and listen to such mediocre drivel?

It’s called a diversion. Mind Candy. We need things that don’t require us to think too hard at times. I would suppose that most people seeking a diversion also have a side of them that relishes history, physics or religion.

I like Lady Gaga

I also like Bach, of Montreal, and Cloud Cult.

300 was an alright movie, but I also like Citizen Kane.

Whatchoo gonna do about it?

Public “Education”? Pop “culture”?

Taste is subjective.

Fine to do it sometimes to relax. Huge problem when hundreds of millions of people aspire to nothing better.

@ Sueanne – there are things that are relaxing to read or watch that are not completely devoid of substance also. I am not saying we should all read Proust and gorge our eyes on Bergman films.

@Sueanne_Tremendous is right. There is absolutely a place in our lives for mindless diversions and entertainment and you really have no idea what else these people might do or be interested.

My mother was a very intelligent, educated woman. She was an associate professor of statistics and research design in the doctoral program of nursing at the University of Maryland. Her avocation was music. She played with several ensembles who concentrated on early music, the music of the middle ages and renaissance played on original instruments and had a pretty sophisticated knowledge of the music, the intruments and the history of those periods. There were also times when our family went through some pretty rough patches. When she had free time she absolutely devoured murder mysteries. She loved watching Law and Order and Cops (well, the Cops phase didn’t last all that long, I have to admit). She would occasionally watch one of those silly “blooper” shows. She just wanted to give her mind a rest sometimes, you know? To be entertained and escape. If you judged her by what she read and watched on T.V. in her free time, you would have missed about 95% of who she really was.

What is diversionary and entertaining for one person may not be for another. Everyone gets to choose what works for them, what the want to read.

300 was not a crap movie. It was an adaptation of a brilliantly written graphic novel by Frank MIller. The scenes in the movie were taken directly from the book.

And for crissakes, what do you want? At least they’re coming to the library. They could be home playing World of Warcraft or robbing a bank.

@Rarebear I would argue that WoW is more beneficial than Jerry Springer.

Ayn Rand’s favorite tv show was Charlie’s Angels and Mark Twain liked fart and dick jokes.

Ayn Rand also praised serial killers. Just sayin’.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard Thanks for the Ayn Rand factoid. Charlie’s Angels,eh? I didn’t know that. Interesting.

OK, I know 300 was based on the graphic novel. I appreciate comics, especially those by Daniel Clowes and Robert Crumb ( a couple of Dan clowes’ books were weaved into movies called “Ghost World” and “Art School Confidential”- two of my favorites). But some of the people that come in have their entire ouevre based on the typical crime/mystery/romance novel. It wouldn’t hurt them to pick up something new and different once in awhile.

@lillycoyote, yep, she had a huge hardon for that show. I’m not sure why, but it’s pretty well documented.

Ayn Rand was a loon. Just sayin’.

Compared to the original story, I felt 300 was pretty mediocre. Good camera work, though.

And of course Mark Twain liked fart and dick jokes! He was largely a humorist! That’s not a surprise!

Wow. I consider myself a book snob, and I worked in a bookstore for 6 years. Yeah, it was painful to see how many copies “drivel” sells. Yeah, electronically produced music isn’t my favourite. But I think you’re being more than a little harsh.

I’m a grad student. I read Literature (with a capital L) for a living. If I want to watch a mindless TV show in the evening, or put on some silly music, or watch a movie (as opposed to a film), I won’t be ashamed of it.

And yeah, I love to play World of Warcraft. And I’m a genius. But I’m not the one on the high horse here.

@ladymia69, maybe, maybe not, but she was intelligent. And she liked a stupid show. And fart and dick jokes are soooo base. Sheesh, Twain must have been a real imbecile.

And how do you know that these folks who check out cheesy romance books and listen to bubblegum pop don’t engage in more intellectual pursuits when you aren’t looking? Some of those Norah Roberts leg-humpers could be Nobel Prize winners for all anyone knows.

@ladymia69 Twain was much, much more than simply or merely a humorist, and even his humorous writings were considerably more sophisticated than your average fart joke.

Edit: @Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard You beat me to it. Twain was kind of an imbecile wasn’t he, I withdraw my above comment.

For the record, Norah Jones is a fantastic musician who writes her own songs and plays piano and guitar. So is Lady Gaga, for that matter.

@Seelix, Norah Roberts, I meant… my bad.

Here’s a thought: the next time someone comes in and checks out (or asks about) something that you consider mindless drivel, suggest something you think is more high-brow. Someone checks out a Nora Roberts book, pleasantly recommend Jane Eyre. If they check out a formulaic movie, suggest something you think might work for them. They might like it and you might feel better. And I agree with everyone who says that mindless diversion isn’t a bad thing.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard – Gotcha. I should have figured, but Norah Jones is kinda poppy, so I thought maybe…

@lillycoyote: I did not say that Mark Twain was “merely” anything. Everyone wears many shoes and has many faces.

@tedibear I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. Imagine if you were renting “The Cult of Cartman” at the video store and the clerk tried his best to conceal the patronizing tone in his voice as he recommended you try “Pride and Prejudice” next time?

“Everyone wears many shoes and has many faces.”

Very true. One pair of my shoes has an IQ of 175, and another loves Family Guy.
One of my faces memorizes Petrarch’s poetry, and another devours Charlaine Harris.

Did you ever consider that maybe these people come to library specifically to get their little doses of escapist crap because the don’t want to pay 24.95 for a cheesy book that’s only going to take them two days to read? You have no idea what else they might be reading.

Considering that the average American reads only two books a year, and that library systems have a huge selection of intellectual books, I think it’s safe to say that most of the people who don’t take out intellectual books don’t get them from elsewhere, either.

Thank you, Incendiary Dan.

@incendiary_dan I don’t necessarily think that’s safe to say at all. Some books I’m willing to pay good money for because I want to savor and keep them, some I get at the library because they’re just escapist stuff and I don’t want to pay the price of a brand new hardback.

wow, @ladymia69 is really getting crucified on this one.

@cockswain – Hence, why I said pleasantly in my answer. It can be done without being patronizing. Okay, okay, I would hope it could be done pleasantly!

@lillycoyote My experience as someone who checks out only intellectual books (thought admittedly a few stupid movies), and has friends that do likewise, is that people who do so won’t necessarily want to buy all of them either. They’re more expensive. You don’t necessarily want to add another book to your likely already expansive collection unless you know it’s worth keeping as a reference. Libraries are great for this.

It’s okay, Cockswain! I can handle it, I assure you.

I consider all the movies I watch and books I read as escapes…I just try to read quality material. I am not entertained by the eighth-grade reading-level material I find in most blockbuster paperbacks. I like to think when I entertain myself. It helps me escape just fine!

I think that is the beauty of all forms of art, music, media, and prose is that there is so much to chose from. IMO everything was created for a reason either personal or commercial and it is entirely up to the person to make up their own mind unencumbered by the censorship of someones else’s opinions. Either way, the thought Police are still lurking in the shadows….be afraid…very afraid!

People generally do not want to expend the effort to cultivate good taste. Because it does take effort, lots and lots of effort, if you’ve lived for so long on a cultural kind of autopilot. I suppose it’s a shame, but I can’t blame them (or myself) when they (or I) succumb to that internal saccharin-sucking infant that wants only to watch another numbing rerun of Jersey Shore or Family Guy.

I have brilliant friends who in a handful of years will be doctors and entrepreneurs, but they consume popular culture in doses that nauseate me. One such friend recently refused to see a Coen brothers film because the trailer was not exciting enough (this despite insanely good reviews, which of course are meaningless but appealing regardless, one would think, right?). Which is to say this person really almost violently refused when the idea of seeing said film was pushed gently on said person. It was fascinating to watch. Why the anger and fear?

Probably a lot of people would react the same way to literature suggestions at the library. I think some see it as an assault on the taste they refuse so obdurately to cultivate. They hit you with the ‘taste is subjective’ cop-out and call you an elitist for presuming that their cultural sensibilities might be refined by certain books, by certain music, whatever. And how can you respond? Of course taste is subjective. Some people love candy, some people aren’t into it – it’s subjective. But no one can subsist on a diet entirely of candy. That’s not healthy. It’s actually pretty gross. And likewise, if all you’re consuming culturally is Twilight and Taylor Swift, then you’re fuckin’ gross. Go on a culture diet.

If I sound elitist it’s because I am. I’m not above pop culture (nobody in 21st century America is), but it’s not difficult to recognize that certain commodities, products of pop culture, need to be consumed in moderation.

If you claim that most people do consume this insubstantial stuff in moderation, I might suggest you are fooling yourself. I will be entering graduate school to study English literature soon, and even my cultural intake is predominantly shit. All the novels and poems I read and all the theses I write won’t be enough to counter it. My friends, meanwhile, devour only the lowest and most vulgar forms of popular culture, whether movies or music. Never mind reading; they simply don’t do it.

If I continue I might aggravate myself so I’ll just stop.

Maybe they do it to give self-righteous elitists something to look down their noses at.

@psychocandy, functionalism, for the win! lolz

Can someone explain to me reasonably why there is sometimes such disdain for quote-unquote elitism?

Absalom, you are my hero!

Yeah. People who think they are better than everyone else, and who most likely have had many more opportunities than their subordinates, are great people. ~

I love public libraries. I was on a kick years ago that I was interested in hearing all the old radio programs. At the time, they were on cassette tapes. I devoured them just because I was interested and didn’t watch television. I hope I wasn’t judged by my library staff. God knows what else I took out just because it was there and it was already paid for and I was interested.

Okay, maybe WOW wasn’t the best example, sorry for all you WOW players out there. My point, however, stands. They’re going to a library. That’s cool! It’s not something to be snobbish about.

@Rarebear if it is a public library, the patrons own it and the employees work for the patrons. I suppose they can check out whatever they please.

@bkcunningham Exactly my point. They’re GOING TO A LIBRARY. They’re not playing video games, robbing banks, smoking in the boys room, or farting around on Fluther. So what if they’re checking out pulp fiction?

I just farted…while on Fluther

I suppose if you wanted to, you could be farting around on Fluther in the library.

@bkcunningham I think we just figured out what I’m doing tomorrow. :P

Last year when my dad was dying, I was telling a friend about how I wasn’t sleeping at night. I just couldn’t get my mind off my dad and everything that was going on with him.
She handed me a paperback book, (it happened to be a Nora Roberts). She said “here, tonight when you go to bed try reading a little of this until you get sleepy.” I did and I slept better than I had in weeks.
I didn’t have to concentrate or think or try to figure out the why? of it. I just read and got my mind off of all the troubling things going on. I might only read one page, or maybe a few chapters but it always helped me to relax.
I have since tried reading something that you might call “of good taste”, it didn’t help me sleep at all. So now I’m back to the “gobbledy-gook ” every night, and sleeping quite well.
No that isn’t all I read, but I don’t think that my librarian looks down on me for an of my choices, she orders more for me!

@incendiary_dan you’re welcome. ; )

People like what they like. Honestly, who the fuck cares?

@Jude speaks the troof.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard Das righ..

@psychocandy – And oh but ah, the issue is elitism, not classist conflict or opportunity. If you cannot condemn it without hypothetical addenda, what are you condemning? An imaginary analogue at best, straw man worst. Et cetera. I do not, by the way, consider myself any better than others. More often than not it’s the opposite.

@wilma – I think your testimony illustrates well enough what this kind of popular culture achieves. Namely that it puts us to sleep.

Sleep is wonderful. But some people are always sleeping, always relaxing – relaxing further from a state of lesser relaxation, toward intellectual and cultural catatonia.

So be it.

@absalom I don’t think I know any of these “always sleeping” people of whom you speak.

@wilma I refer you to cockswain’s answer above:

Fine to do it sometimes to relax. Huge problem when hundreds of millions of people aspire to nothing better.

Sometimes people like a whole range of things. Me?

Music: The Bay City Rollers, Yo-yo Ma, The B-52’s, banjo music, bagpipe music, the soundtrack for Saturday Night Fever, John Williams, Bach, John O’ Hurley (he composes piano music in addition to hosting Match Game and playing J. Peterman on Seinfeld and going on Dancing With the Stars) George Gershwin, The Beatles, and pretty much every piece of Christmas music that has come down the pike except for Dominic the Donkey.

Movies: Peter Pan, Lost in Translation, Rear Window, All 3 Toy Story movies, Star Wars, Megamind, Sense and Sensibility, The Sound of Music, Young Frankenstein and The Piano.

TV shows: NCIS, Glee, Masterpiece Theater and Turner Classic Movies, Cold Case, The Big Bang Theory and pretty much anything on the Food Network or HGTV.

Comedians: Carol Burnett, Bill Engvall, Laurel and Hardy, Ron White, Bill Cosby and Margaret Cho.

Sometimes people like all kinds of different things. Sometimes you might think a particular type of literature or movie or music is stupid or silly or mindless, but sometimes those things can give people a lot of joy. Sometimes people have never been exposed to other things that are out of the mainstream. Sometimes people enjoy lighthearted “easy” things and sometimes the like “deeper” more involved things. Some people have a lot of pain and tragedy in their lives and sometimes some of the more “trivial” or “popular” things just make life easier to bear.

There’s a fine line between elitism and favoring quality. The issue the OP brings up isn’t so much “why are people reading so much of this stuff”, but rather “why are they reading it and not other stuff?”

Let’s not deflect a simple inquiry like trying to figure out why people like what they like, and what that says about the society as a whole (if anything). It’s a legitimate question.

@wilma – Consider yourself fortunate.

@incendiary_dan You get me, my friend!

@absalom , I do.

I think my question could definitely be considered one of the first “flutherstorms” I have experienced!

@Jude Haha yeah, that was awesome. :)

But if I had to go further with it. Well, mediocre drivel. People probbaly think the same thing about every single thing you enjoy. My passion is horror movies. I get ragged on a shitload about that. People go, I don’t understand why you like em so much and…did I ASK you to understand lol.

Sure, there is a great difference in between the mainstream, the intellectual material, the mindless or the immature as well as the obscure and the avantgarde, but in the grand scheme of things…people like the shit they like. Not everything that’s mainstream sucks, and not everything that’s underground is necessarily some genius shit.

Personally, I’m just glad I live in a society that has thousands of different choices and things for peeps to explore. I might hate Twilight, but I’m glad we got diversity. Otherwise it’s back to putting ’‘no black people’’ signs in restaurant windows and that just ain’t cool.

As for commercialism and crap, which is a factor often attributed to what is seemingly a lot more shallow than some other things, and often true, well we all go out, work and pay the rent, anyways.
Reminds of some song by Eminem where he compares a ghetto mass shooting to an upper class city shooting and how the status makes the difference when it comes to immorality and shit. In the end, people die, and that fucking sucks. But yeah I’m totally off track.
Okay so maybe this, if I tell you a nightmare I had, you may not understand why it’s scary, but one man’s garbage is another man’s treasure, and so on.

Elitism is looked upon with disdain when it turns into pretentiousness. Yeah, maybe you’re better than I, but nobody cares but you.

@Symbeline I don’t think there’s any real comparison between the false diversity of crap, crap, and more different crap that the market produces and diversity in human beings. Indeed, many people like Harry Redner convincingly point out that all of these false choices we have in mass media and mass production in fact reduce diversity between communities and cultures, ultimately homogenizing human societies. In that regard, I’d rather have only a few genuine shitty choices over a thousand homogeneous but decent ones.

Yeah, maybe, but how does that matter if one dude likes Penny Arcade and the other chick Lady Gaga? Was my last post that horrible or…? XD

I think there’s probably certain things we can all agree are mass produced crap, and other things we can debate on the quality of. Whether or not we like something, we might still also be able to admit its quality. For instance, above I make clear I’m not a fan of Ayn Rand. But I can respect the quality of her works quite a bit more than Harlequin romance. At the very least, it is not formulaic and mass produced.

Okay yeah, I get it. Well, that is true, I wasn’t saying that, let’s say that Twilight has no quality; that just because I accept it, it has some. I was really just saying about how people just like whatever they like, whether it’s crap or not. (Literal crap or opinionated crap, if you get what I mean?)
I mean like, there certainly is an aspect of literal care, quality and effort to be observed in many works, but my point wasn’t really checking that out, rather than just saying some people like whatever you know?
Sure there must be some…reason why one likes this and the other that, but I’m not a shrink or a social scientist here lol.

I am an avid reader of fiction, loving all genres, and I have learned lots of things I would have never learned otherwise, in those nonsensical wastes of time. I have an excellent vocabulary, and am a very good speller. Yes I love Sookie Stackhouse and Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series, but I think it’s better to read than not, regardless of your tastes. At least I read.

Late to a party I should been in on at the beginning. Back in my bookselling days I always appreciated the readers of “drivel” (I’ll mention Danielle Steele but not some others that would get me slapped) because of the masses of folks willing to pay $20 + for first edition hardcovers. They essentially paid my wages and kept us open for business. And after all is said and done, with books anyway, it’s still reading. Not a bad thing.

@ladymia69 : I hope your Tuesday is going better!

[mod says] Flame off, folks. No need to make this personal.

A little bit of “drivel” is healthy to avoid brain overload and insomnia. We can’t always think hard or read books like Foucault’s Pendulum or study Goedel’s mathematical proofs. There’s a problem when “drivel” becomes the norm. This will numb our minds. Lifelong learning is the best protection against unemployment or lousy pay checks.

Really good stuff is rare; they have to find it in order to enjoy it, and you can only enjoy a thing for so long before you’ve chewed all of the goodness out of it. The mediocre stuff makes up in volume what it lacks in substance.
I’ve noticed this with anime, too. A lot of anime is a formulaic rehashing of the same stories, in the same settings, with only minor variations in the characters. Every now and then they’ll produce one that is fun and original, which will be borrowed from until the next good idea comes along.

You might take it upon yourself to recommend things to your visitors.

@Nullo visitors? Like people on fluther? How does one recommend things on fluther? Doesn’t it have to be in the form of a question?

@ladymia69 I’m guessing he means visitors to your library.

@ladymia69 I mean visitors to your library. Unless you’re hiding ETs in your basement.

I don’t feel like it’s my place to try and change someone’s taste. I can tell when people would be interested in my suggestions or not…those who are interested, I do make suggestions for them, and they come back happy every time.

If you don’t want to make suggestions directly, you could put up some kind of bulletin board that you change out your suggestions on a daily (for part of it) and weekly (for other parts of it) and monthly (for other parts of it).

You could list your book of the week (from your own list of 100 books that you think are good and important), then have another section that says If you like this (insert a drivel type of thing that people seem to like) then have a suggestion for something that you think these same people might like (that is more challenging). Example: If you like Anime, then you might like this book (insert title) about the Japanese artist Hokusai.

Then you could have a section where you ask some type of open ended question about a smart subject and people could put their answers on slips of paper and tack them to the board. Encourage discussion (kind of like these ones we’re having on Fluther) on your bulletin board.

In other words, you can make suggestions without offending people (or telling them that their taste is drivel) by putting up your own ideas about what is good, and somehow bringing people over to your “Board of Interest” to interact with your suggestions.

Another example: If you like comedy, you might like Mark Twain. If you like science, you might like the biography of Tesla. If you like lasar tag, you might like this book about the invention of the lasar beam.

Unfortunately, since I work in a large regional public library, we are not allowed to express our tastes in any way. But when someone plops a copy of The Moviegoer by Walker Percy and a copy of the movie Mouchette to check out, I know they’re my people, and we can talk about the good things in life!

All work is derivative. If your list of good media is long enough, you ought to be able (though I dunno ‘bout them permitting it) to link Nora Robert’s latest to, say, L. M. Montgomery.
Or whatever. What kind of thing does Roberts write? All I know is that they have overlapping demographics.

@ladymia69 I’m just curious as to why you are not allowed to express your tastes in any way. All of the libraries that I go to have all sorts of suggestions and little signs pointing out certain things. Have you talked to the supervisors about this? Plus all of the librarians that I have talked to will give suggestions if you ask them a question about a topic or an author. This just sounds odd.

I mean, if someone asks me for a recommendation, and they have a stack of harlequin romance novels on the counter, I suppose I could refer them to Jane Eyre, or Rebecca, but I don’t think that’s what they want to hear.

And @Kardamom We do have a little shelf here and there that has a sign pointing to some mysteries, or some young adult displays, but these are not my jurisdiction since I am a circulation library assistant. The people who work at reference make those displays.

@Kardamom That is a really great idea about the bulletin board! I wish I could implement that, but I am not in a position of creative power where I work. Most of my suggestions are not met with willingness from my present supervisor (who is soon to be replaced). I wish I could be made “creative director” or something. But there is no position for that.

@ladymia69 That’s really a bummer. It sounds like the supervisor is kind of stifling knowledge by not letting you guys make suggestions. Sometimes all it takes to open up a whole new world for a kid is to say, “Hey have you ever heard about so and so, since you already like such and such.” Hopefully the new supervisor that replaces the current one will be more open minded. In the meantime, try to get the attention of other people that work there and get them on your side.