Caution Teenagers by CGP Grey http://www.cgpgrey.com/
This week we were required to ask a ‘young person’ some questions about popular culture. Unfortunately I don’t really know anyone from the ages of 13-19 so I took to the online world to ask some teenagers there. I used a forum on the NaNoWriMo website to post my questions and received a wide variety of responses which I will discuss below. NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month and is an international online gathering of people aiming to write at least 50,000 words during the month of November. The teenagers that replied to my thread are either aiming to write 50,000 words this year or have participated in earlier years. Obviously trying to write 50,000 words in a month isn't the typical goal for your every day teenager, but I think the answers I got from my teens were interesting nonetheless.
The questions I asked the teenagers are as follows:
1. Who is your favourite actor/actress at the moment? Why?
2. What is your favourite movie?
3. What is your favourite Young Adult novel?
4. Who is your favourite singer/band?
5. What do you think is the definition of "popular culture"?
6. How much time do you spend on the internet?
7. What are some popular trends you see at the moment? ie. clothing, accessories, etc.
8. What kind of social media do you use regularly? ie. Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, etc.
9. Do you think role-playing/writing fan-fiction is educational? Why?
10. What do you think are the pressures that young people face in today's society?
Unfortunately the above link is dead so here is a link to the teenage forum I initially posted my question on.
It was interesting to read the definitions that young people had about popular culture. The majority agreed that it was a trend or something along the same lines that a large number of people followed. Other comments were made as to popular culture being something the media pressed upon the public, others said that popular culture was something that became very popular very quickly only to be forgotten a few weeks or months later. An interesting reply from someone named Fantasy-Writer said that popular culture is the things they only know about because they are popular ie. Abbey Road, 'We Are the Champions', Romeo and Juliet. I liked that comment as a rebuttal to the idea that pop-culture is fleeting, Fantasy-Writer argues that popular-culture is something timeless.
I also enjoyed reading the answers to the question of what pressures young people face today. It was nice to get some candid responses about sex, relationships, school and family pressure, as well as pressure from the media. A comment by consequenceofsounds highlighted the disillusionment some young people feel about being born in the 90's and not feeling valued by the rest of the world. There seems to be an awareness that growing up in a world surrounded by technology has it's benefits and curses.
I hope this thread continues to get replies because I enjoy reading them!
Wow so fascinating reading all the answers! Great idea to do a survey online, so many different opinions. I guess that proves that even if teenagers/teenage pop cultures all seems the same to us, they all see things very differently! I love how they were all like "well I don't read young adult fiction, but I guess ___" - like they wanted to seem older... but then again, I don't think I read that much YA fiction as a teenager either! :)
ReplyDeleteReally interesting post Annette!
Cheers
Caitlin
The link to your thread is dead :( I was looking forward to that. I think there's something to the idea that pop culture is a bit of a mixture between 'high' culture - the timeless and lasting stuff - and 'low' culture, being the disposable and temporary texts and creations that ride the wave of popularity that surges through culture as a whole. Pop builds on older texts and conventions, concepts and ideas and seems to enjoy applying newer concepts and uses to them, refocusing them into something that is recognizable, but at the same time new. Banksy is the best immediate example I can think of off the top of my head.
ReplyDeleteI think it's also a great point that pop culture is something of a site for young people to explore new things and deal with disillusionment about a lot of stuff that they're going through. I'm not entirely sure if pop culture acts as a mouthpiece for that disillusionment, but it certainly helps make sense of a lot of things that you might be experiencing for the first time. Great idea - I don't suppose we have an archive of that thread at all?
No! I'm sad the link to the thread is dead, I naively thought the link would remain active but I had a look on the forums and it looks like the deleted the older/inactive threads :(
ReplyDelete