As you may be aware, dear reader, I’m a big fan of the kind of pop culture meta piece like this one from (surprise) Amanda Marcotte about what she perceives as the ascendance of mass-market mediocrity in modern American popular culture as being inherently more “worthy” than properties with more limited, niche appeal.

I include below an execerpt which demonstrates her thesis:

But in recent years, I’ve felt a shift in the zeitgeist. It’s just a hunch, but it feels like the belief that mediocrity, by dint of being “populist”, is somehow more pure and honorable for it. Terms like “elitist”, “snob”, and the dreaded “hipster” are flug around with zeal. I suppose that was always true, but now people who do that aren’t just implying that you’re a weirdo for having certain tastes, but that you’re somehow morally inferior because you aren’t one with the people or some crap like that. It seems that mediocrity is literally beginning to rule.

I’m pretty sure Amanda’s on the right track with this idea, and that it ties nicely into the whole “Real Americans hate science and thinking” attitude so many of us perceive around us. I’m also pretty sure that it’s not as new a thing as Amanda posits.

Damn, this makes me feel old.

It’s no secret that for most of my life, I’ve found myself drawn to entertainments with limited appeal and was ostracized for it as a kid, to the point where I spent quite a bit of time denying my interest in these things and trying (more often than not in vain) to replace them with more “socially acceptable” interests.

Eventually, lots of us outsiders found each other and we all realized collectively that it’s cool to like what we like, and despite what “the masses” are out there saying, there’s nothing wrong with being the way we are. Life got much better* once I figured that out, and I suspect that it works that way for most people with similar origin stories.

That doesn’t mean that we weirdos aren’t always on the side of Angels – we do our fair share of scorning the mundanes for their love of things like “Two and A Half Men” and “American Idol”, though often that’s part of a cycle of resentment going back decades that we should really get over. For the most part, though, we’re content to be left alone with our indie music, sci-fi, and wooden german board games, and are perfectly willing to let everyone else do their own, mainstream thing**.

While the idea is not new, I think there may be some substance to the fact that this sort of thing si becoming more heated in recent years. I suspect I have a theory as to why:

In the last decade or so, there’s been a steady creep of geeky-nerdy things seeping into the world of mainstream entertainment, with the internet and video games and stuff like “Big Bang Theory”, enough of a creep that the people who traditionally hated on the outsiders are feeling some pressure on their worldview because they find themselves adopting some of it. Of coure, the bully-oppressor type hates nothing more than having the social order challenged, largely because they’re so invested in it. This elevation of mediocrity holding some sort of moral superiority over fringe things is that group’s way of trying to re-assert their feelings of control.

This whole thesis goes to prove that John Hodgman is perhaps our greatest modern day philosopher, because he was really on to something with his geek culture vs jock culture theory, because this idea is just that one, through a set of vintage black-rimmed hipster glasses.

________________________

* – Mostly… it seems that in my case, there were a few hiccups regarding long-standing relationships with people who preferred the kid who denied his nature, and resent him for disappearing.

** – I failed here recently, I think. Last week I saw Jack and Jill (for free, I feel compelled to add), and while I giggled at Pacino chewing scenery left and right, I felt like I needed a shower after all those fart jokes and incidences of product placement.