Quackcast 695 - Pop Culture

The QuackCast

Pop-Culture, and the way it's always changing… We fall in love with pop culture but it's constantly changing and new pop culture is always being created, which means that as time goes on less and less people will care about the same pop culture as you. And what you were into will become niche and obscure, even though at the time you fell in love with it, it was massively mainstream and all over the place! There are exceptions to this with things that are SUPER popular like Star Wars, DC and Marvel comic characters, Star Trek, and Doctor Who, who's new versions facilitate a life support for the old stuff or sometimes even a revival of it, but they also have an issue where they try and replace their classic stuff with the newer versions.

The term “Pop-culture” started as a sort of critical description of what was thought of as a low quality, disposable alternative to “true” culture, but we've long since embraced it and no longer see it as something lessor. Pop-culture is simply the universal, current, contemporary culture that we all have access to. The two biggest factors in pop-culture are time and money: Time, because there's a constant turnover of content, people lose interest in things constantly so we always need new things; and Money, because the more money put into something the bigger it will get in pop-culture and also the more something can earn (because it's part of a popular concept) the more likely more of those things will be made (i.e superhero movies, Isekai anime etc). Older, previously created pop-culture still continues to exist but rapidly loses popularity and availability the older it gets. By its nature there is an extreme bias towards the new.

Here we're talking about how massively popular and universal things become niche and unknown. It can revive because mining older pop-culture to make new pop-culture is very lucrative and easy, but it's never the same when it does. Even perennially popular things like Star Trek, Marvel and DC constantly change with each new iteration. Companies like Disney re-release their older IPs in their original forms but the purpose of that is to maintain the popularity of their brand (and now the streaming service) to help market their newer stuff. Pop-culture is a ravenous beast that must consonantly be fed with the new and money.

What are some Pop-culture things you love but no one else does anymore?

This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by The Scourge of Ninepoint - A mournful yet extremely respectful funerary sounding tune ramps up quickly into a furiously paced call to action and a desperate race against time!

Topics and shownotes

Links

Featured comic: Snake in the office - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2024/jul/02/featured-comic-snake-in-the-office/

Featured music: The Scourge of Ninepoint - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_Scourge_of_Ninepoint/ - by BonesMcKay, rated T.

Special thanks to: Gunwallace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Gunwallace/ Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/ Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/

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